1. OGLE-2005-BLG-153: Microlensing Discovery and Characterization of a Very Low Mass Binary
- Author
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Michael D. Albrow, Andrew Williams, J. P. Beaulieu, Kouji Ohnishi, D. J. Sullivan, Yoshitaka Itow, Nicholas J. Rattenbury, D. Dominis, L. Wyrzykowski, Misao Sasaki, Yasushi Muraki, D. M. Bramich, Kimiaki Masuda, Andrew Gould, D. Kubas, Keith Horne, P. J. Tristram, Iain A. Steele, Kasper Harpsøe, J. W. Menzies, B. S. Gaudi, Colin Snodgrass, P. Fouque, Arnaud Cassan, J. B. Marquette, Yoon-Hyun Ryu, M. Hoffman, Yutaka Matsubara, K.-H. Hwang, S. R. Kane, Kailash C. Sahu, Martin Burgdorf, Ian A. Bond, C. Okada, C. Vinter, To. Saito, Martin Dominik, John B. Hearnshaw, K. M. Hill, R. M. Martin, P. M. Kilmartin, J. N. Wood, C.-U. Lee, Darren L. DePoy, M. Desort, S. Dieters, J. Donatowicz, Byeong-Gon Park, D. P. Bennett, Fumio Abe, Philip Yock, M. Motomura, Igor Soszyński, J. J. Calitz, E. Corrales, K. R. Pollard, Joachim Wambsganss, J. G. Greenhill, Andrzej Udalski, Michał K. Szymański, O. Szewczyk, R. W. Pogge, K. Ulaczyk, U. G. Jørgensen, K. H. Cook, M. F. Bode, C. Han, Grzegorz Pietrzyński, Kisaku Kamiya, K. Woller, Takashi Sako, T. Yoshioka, J. A. R. Caldwell, P. J. Meintjes, C. Coutures, Stephane Brillant, C. S. Botzler, Takahiro Sumi, Shota Nakamura, and M. Kubiak
- Subjects
binaries: general ,gravitational lensing: micro ,Population ,Binary number ,FOS: Physical sciences ,Astrophysics ,Astrophysics::Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics ,Gravitational microlensing ,01 natural sciences ,Luminosity ,Einstein radius ,0103 physical sciences ,Astrophysics::Solar and Stellar Astrophysics ,education ,010303 astronomy & astrophysics ,Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR) ,Astrophysics::Galaxy Astrophysics ,Physics ,education.field_of_study ,010308 nuclear & particles physics ,Star formation ,urogenital system ,Astronomy and Astrophysics ,Stars ,Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics ,Space and Planetary Science ,Astrophysics::Earth and Planetary Astrophysics ,Low Mass - Abstract
The mass function and statistics of binaries provide important diagnostics of the star formation process. Despite this importance, the mass function at low masses remains poorly known due to observational difficulties caused by the faintness of the objects. Here we report the microlensing discovery and characterization of a binary lens composed of very low-mass stars just above the hydrogen-burning limit. From the combined measurements of the Einstein radius and microlens parallax, we measure the masses of the binary components of $0.10\pm 0.01\ M_\odot$ and $0.09\pm 0.01\ M_\odot$. This discovery demonstrates that microlensing will provide a method to measure the mass function of all Galactic populations of very low mass binaries that is independent of the biases caused by the luminosity of the population., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, 1 table
- Published
- 2010