Back to Search Start Over

First Resolution of Microlensed Images of a Binary-lens Event

Authors :
Zexuan Wu
Subo Dong
A. Mérand
Christopher S. Kochanek
Przemek Mróz
Jinyi Shangguan
Grant Christie
Thiam-Guan Tan
Thomas Bensby
Joss Bland-Hawthorn
Sven Buder
Frank Eisenhauer
Andrew P. Gould
Janez Kos
Tim Natusch
Sanjib Sharma
Andrzej Udalski
J. Woillez
David A. H. Buckley
I. B. Thompson
Karim Abd El Dayem
Anthony Berdeu
Jean-Philippe Berger
Guillaume Bourdarot
Wolfgang Brandner
Richard I. Davies
Denis Defrère
Catherine Dougados
Antonia Drescher
Andreas Eckart
Maximilian Fabricius
Helmut Feuchtgruber
Natascha M. Förster Schreiber
Paulo Garcia
Reinhard Genzel
Stefan Gillessen
Gernot Heißel
Sebastian Hönig
Mathis Houlle
Pierre Kervella
Laura Kreidberg
Sylvestre Lacour
Olivier Lai
Romain Laugier
Jean-Baptiste Le Bouquin
James Leftley
Bruno Lopez
Dieter Lutz
Felix Mang
Florentin Millour
Miguel Montargès
Hugo Nowacki
Mathias Nowak
Thomas Ott
Thibaut Paumard
Karine Perraut
Guy Perrin
Romain Petrov
Pierre-Olivier Petrucci
Nicolas Pourre
Sebastian Rabien
Diogo C. Ribeiro
Sylvie Robbe-Dubois
Matteo Sadun Bordoni
Daryl Santos
Jonas Sauter
Jules Scigliuto
Taro T. Shimizu
Christian Straubmeier
Eckhard Sturm
Matthias Subroweit
Calvin Sykes
Linda Tacconi
Frédéric Vincent
Felix Widmann
the GRAVITY+ collaboration
Source :
The Astrophysical Journal, Vol 977, Iss 2, p 229 (2024)
Publication Year :
2024
Publisher :
IOP Publishing, 2024.

Abstract

We resolve the multiple images of the binary-lens microlensing event ASASSN-22av using the GRAVITY instrument of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). The light curves show weak binary-lens perturbations, complicating the analysis, but the joint modeling with the VLTI data breaks several degeneracies, arriving at a strongly favored solution. Thanks to precise measurements of the angular Einstein radius θ _E = 0.724 ± 0.002 mas and microlens parallax, we determine that the lens system consists of two M dwarfs with masses of M _1 = 0.258 ± 0.008 M _⊙ and M _2 = 0.130 ± 0.007 M _⊙ , a projected separation of r _⊥ = 6.83 ± 0.31 au, and a distance of D _L = 2.29 ± 0.08 kpc. The successful VLTI observations of ASASSN-22av open up a new path for studying intermediate-separation (i.e., a few astronomical units) stellar-mass binaries, including those containing dark compact objects such as neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
15384357
Volume :
977
Issue :
2
Database :
Directory of Open Access Journals
Journal :
The Astrophysical Journal
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
edsdoj.169c4efbcd4751ad64e77ba5835a2f
Document Type :
article
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad90b9