ترغب بنشر مسار تعليمي؟ اضغط هنا

First Observation of Parallax in a Gravitational Microlensing Event

59   0   0.0 ( 0 )
 نشر من قبل Dave Bennett
 تاريخ النشر 1995
  مجال البحث فيزياء
والبحث باللغة English




اسأل ChatGPT حول البحث

We present the first detection of parallax effects in a gravitational microlensing event. Parallax in a gravitational microlensing event observed only from the Earth appears as a distortion of the lightcurve due to the motion of the Earth around the Sun. This distortion can be detected if the event duration is not much less than a year and if the projected velocity of the lens is not much larger than the orbital velocity of the Earth about the Sun. The event presented here has a duration of 220 days and clearly shows the distortion due to the Earths motion. We find that the projected velocity of the lens is 75+/-5 km/s at an angle of 28+/-4 deg from the direction of increasing galactic longitude, as expected for a lens in the galactic disk. A likelihood analysis yields estimates of the distance to and mass of the lens: D_{lens} = 1.7 (+1.1/-0.7) kpc and M = 1.3 (+1.3/-0.6) Msun, suggesting that the lens is a remnant such as a white dwarf or neutron star. A less likely possibility is that the lens is a main sequence star. If so, we can add our upper limit on the observed flux from the lens to the analysis. This modifies the estimates to: D_{lens} = 2.8 (+1.1/-0.6) kpc, and M = 0.6 (+0.4/-0.2) Msun.

قيم البحث

اقرأ أيضاً

57 - A. Fukui , F. Abe , K. Ayani 2008
We report the observation of the first gravitational microlensing event in a sparse stellar field, involving the brightest (V=11.4 mag) andclosest (~ 1 kpc) source star to date. This event was discovered by an amateurastronomer, A. Tago, on 2006 Octo ber 31 as a transient brightening, by ~4.5 mag during a ~15 day period, of a normal A-type star (GSC 3656-1328) in the Cassiopeia constellation. Analysis of both spectroscopic observations and the light curve indicates that this event was caused by gravitational microlensing rather than an intrinsically variable star. Discovery of this single event over a 30 year period is roughly consistent with the expected microlensing rate for the whole sky down to V = 12 mag stars. However, the probability for finding events with such a high magnification (~ 50) is much smaller, by a factor ~1/50, which implies that the true event rate may be higher than expected. This discovery indicates the potential of all sky variability surveys, employing frequent sampling by telescopes with small apertures and wide fields of view, for finding such rare transient events, and using the observations to explore galactic disk structure and search for exo-planets.
333 - A. Gould 2009
Parallax is the most fundamental technique to measure distances to astronomical objects. Although terrestrial parallax was pioneered over 2000 years ago by Hipparchus (ca. 140 BCE) to measure the distance to the Moon, the baseline of the Earth is so small that terrestrial parallax can generally only be applied to objects in the Solar System. However, there exists a class of extreme gravitational microlensing events in which the effects of terrestrial parallax can be readily detected and so permit the measurement of the distance, mass, and transverse velocity of the lens. Here we report observations of the first such extreme microlensing event OGLE-2007-BLG-224, from which we infer that the lens is a brown dwarf of mass M=0.056 +- 0.004 Msun, with a distance of 525 +- 40 pc and a transverse velocity of 113 +- 21 km/s. The velocity places the lens in the thick disk, making this the lowest-mass thick-disk brown dwarf detected so far. Follow-up observations may allow one to observe the light from the brown dwarf itself, thus serving as an important constraint for evolutionary models of these objects and potentially opening a new window on sub-stellar objects. The low a priori probability of detecting a thick-disk brown dwarf in this event, when combined with additional evidence from other observations, suggests that old substellar objects may be more common than previously assumed.
The LIGO-Virgo gravitational-wave (GW) observation unveiled the new population of black holes (BHs) that appears to have an extended mass spectrum up to around $70M_odot$, much heavier than the previously-believed mass range ($sim 8M_odot$). In this paper, we study the capability of a microlensing observation of stars in the Milky Way (MW) bulge region to identify BHs of GW mass scales, taking into account the microlensing parallax characterized by the parameter $pi_{rm E}propto M^{-1/2}$ ($M$ is the mass of a lens), which is a dimension-less quantity defined by the ratio of the astronomical unit to the projected Einstein radius. First, assuming that BHs follow the same spatial and velocity distributions of stars as predicted by the standard MW model, we show that microlensing events with long light curve timescales, $t_{rm E}gtrsim 100~{rm days}$, and small parallax effects, $pi_{rm E}sim 10^{-2}$, are dominated by BH lenses compared to stellar-mass lenses. Second, using a Markov chain Monte Carlo analysis of the simulated light curve, we show that BH lens candidates are securely identified on individual basis, if the parallax effect is detected or well constrained to the precision of a percent level in $pi_{rm E}$. We also discuss that a microlensing event of an intermediate-mass BH of $sim 1000M_odot$, if it occurs, can be identified in a distinguishable way from stellar-mass BHs.
We present analysis of MACHO Alert 95-30, a dramatic gravitational microlensing event towards the Galactic bulge whose peak magnification departs significantly from the standard point-source microlensing model. Alert 95-30 was observed in real-time b y the Global Microlensing Alert Network (GMAN), which obtained densely sampled photometric and spectroscopic data throughout the event. We interpret the light-curve ``fine structure as indicating transit of the lens across the extended face of the source star. This signifies resolution of a star several kpc distant. We find a lens angular impact parameter theta_{min}/theta_{source} = 0.715 +/- 0.003. This information, along with the radius and distance of the source, provides an additional constraint on the lensing system. Spectroscopic and photometric data indicate the source is an M4 III star of radius 61 +/- 12 Rsun, located on the far side of the bulge at 9 kpc. We derive a lens angular velocity, relative to the source, of 21.5 +/- 4.9 km/s/kpc, where the error is dominated by uncertainty in the source radius. Likelihood analysis yields a median lens mass of 0.67{+2.53}{-0.46} Msun, located with 80% probability in the Galactic bulge at a distance of 6.93{+1.56}{-2.25} kpc. If the lens is a main-sequence star, we can include constraints on the lens luminosity. This modifies our estimates to M_lens = 0.53{+0.52}{-0.35} Msun and D_lens = 6.57{+0.99}{-2.25} kpc. Spectra taken during the event show that the absorption line equivalent widths of H alpha and the TiO bands near 6700 A vary, as predicted for microlensing of an extended source. This is most likely due to center-to-limb variation in the stellar spectral lines. These data demonstrate the feasibility of using microlensing limb crossings as a tool to probe stellar atmospheres directly.
We present the analysis of the binary gravitational microlensing event MOA-2015-BLG-020. The event has a fairly long timescale (about 63 days) and thus the light curve deviates significantly from the lensing model that is based on the rectilinear len s-source relative motion. This enables us to measure the microlensing parallax through the annual parallax effect. The microlensing parallax parameters constrained by the ground-based data are confirmed by the Spitzer observations through the satellite parallax method. By additionally measuring the angular Einstein radius from the analysis of the resolved caustic crossing, the physical parameters of the lens are determined. It is found that the binary lens is composed of two dwarf stars with masses $M_1 = 0.606 pm 0.028M_odot$ and $M_2 = 0.125 pm 0.006M_odot$ in the Galactic disk. Assuming the source star is at the same distance as the bulge red clump stars, we find the lens is at a distance $D_L = 2.44 pm 0.10 kpc$. In the end, we provide a summary and short discussion of all published microlensing events in which the annual parallax effect is confirmed by other independent observations.
التعليقات
جاري جلب التعليقات جاري جلب التعليقات
سجل دخول لتتمكن من متابعة معايير البحث التي قمت باختيارها
mircosoft-partner

هل ترغب بارسال اشعارات عن اخر التحديثات في شمرا-اكاديميا