1. INTERPRETATION OF A SHORT-TERM ANOMALY IN THE GRAVITATIONAL MICROLENSING EVENT MOA-2012-BLG-486.
- Author
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Hwang, K.-H., Choi, J.-Y., Bond, I. A., Sumi, T., Han, C., Gaudi, B. S., Gould, A., Bozza, V., Beaulieu, J.-P., Tsapras, Y., Abe, F., Bennett, D. P., Botzler, C. S., Chote, P., Freeman, M., Fukui, A., Fukunaga, D., Harris, P., Itow, Y., and Koshimoto, N.
- Subjects
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MICROLENSING (Astrophysics) , *ASTRONOMICAL perturbation , *BINARY systems (Astronomy) , *GRAVITATIONAL lenses , *ASTRONOMICAL spectroscopy - Abstract
A planetary microlensing signal is generally characterized by a short-term perturbation to the standard single lensing light curve. A subset of binary-source events can produce perturbations that mimic planetary signals, thereby introducing an ambiguity between the planetary and binary-source interpretations. In this paper, we present the analysis of the microlensing event MOA-2012-BLG-486, for which the light curve exhibits a short-lived perturbation. Routine modeling not considering data taken in different passbands yields a best-fit planetary model that is slightly preferred over the best-fit binary-source model. However, when allowed for a change in the color during the perturbation, we find that the binary-source model yields a significantly better fit and thus the degeneracy is clearly resolved. This event not only signifies the importance of considering various interpretations of short-term anomalies, but also demonstrates the importance of multi-band data for checking the possibility of false-positive planetary signals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2013
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