1. THE EXTREME MICROLENSING EVENT OGLE-2007-BLG-224: TERRESTRIAL PARALLAX OBSERVATION OF A THICK-DISK BROWN DWARF
- Author
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Gould, A., Udalski, A., Monard, B., Horne, K., Dong, Subo, Miyake, N., Sahu, K., Bennett, D. P., Wyrzykowski, Ł., Soszyński, I., Szymański, M. K., Kubiak, M., Pietrzyński, G., Szewczyk, O., Ulaczyk, K., Allen, W., Christie, G. W., Depoy, D. L., Gaudi, B. S., Han, C., Lee, C.-U., Mccormick, J., Natusch, T., Park, B.-G., Pogge, R. W., Allan, A., Bode, M. F., Bramich, D. M., Burgdorf, M. J., Dominik, M., Fraser, S. N., Kerins, E., Mottram, C., Snodgrass, C., Steele, I. A., Street, R., Tsapras, Y., Abe, F., Bond, I. A., Botzler, C. S., Fukui, A., Furusawa, K., Hearnshaw, J. B., Itow, Y., Kamiya, K., Kilmartin, P. M., Korpela, A., Lin, W., Ling, C. H., Masuda, K., Matsubara, Y., Muraki, Y., Nagaya, M., Ohnishi, K., Okumura, T., Perrott, Y. C., Rattenbury, N., Saito, To., Sako, T., Skuljan, L., Sullivan, D. J., Sumi, T., Sweatman, W. L., Tristram, P. J., Yock, P. C. M., Albrow, M., Beaulieu, J. P., Coutures, C., Calitz, H., Caldwell, J., Fouqué, P., Martin, Roland, Williams, A., Department of Astronomy (Ohio State University), Ohio State University [Columbus] (OSU), Astrophysics Research Institute [Liverpool] (ARI), Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris (IAP), Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6 (UPMC)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Laboratoire Astrophysique de Toulouse-Tarbes (LATT), Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier (UT3), Université de Toulouse (UT)-Université de Toulouse (UT)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées (OMP), Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier (UT3), Université de Toulouse (UT)-Université de Toulouse (UT)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National d'Études Spatiales [Toulouse] (CNES)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Météo-France -Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National d'Études Spatiales [Toulouse] (CNES)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Météo-France -Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6 (UPMC), Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées-Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées (OMP), and Météo France-Centre National d'Études Spatiales [Toulouse] (CNES)-Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Météo France-Centre National d'Études Spatiales [Toulouse] (CNES)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
- Subjects
Astronomical Objects ,Solar System ,gravitational lensing ,Brown dwarf ,FOS: Physical sciences ,Astrophysics ,Gravitational microlensing ,01 natural sciences ,law.invention ,stars: low-mass ,law ,0103 physical sciences ,Thick disk ,Astrophysics::Solar and Stellar Astrophysics ,010303 astronomy & astrophysics ,Astrophysics::Galaxy Astrophysics ,Physics ,[SDU.ASTR.SR]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Astrophysics [astro-ph]/Solar and Stellar Astrophysics [astro-ph.SR] ,010308 nuclear & particles physics ,Astronomy and Astrophysics ,[PHYS.ASTR.SR]Physics [physics]/Astrophysics [astro-ph]/Solar and Stellar Astrophysics [astro-ph.SR] ,Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies ,Lens (optics) ,Space and Planetary Science ,Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) ,astrometry ,Astrophysics::Earth and Planetary Astrophysics ,Parallax ,Event (particle physics) ,brown dwarfs - Abstract
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., Comment: ApJ Letters, in press, 15 pages including 2 figures
- Published
- 2009