First detection of a gravitational microlensing candidate towards the Small Magellanic Cloud

Abstract

We report the first discovery of a gravitational microlensing candidate towards a new population of source stars, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The candidate event's light curve shows no variation for 3 years before an upward excursion lasting $\sim 217$ days that peaks around January 11, 1997 at a magnification of $\sim 2.1$. Microlensing events towards the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Galactic bulge have allowed important conclusions to be reached on the stellar and dark matter content of the Milky Way. The SMC gives a new line-of-sight through the Milky Way, and is expected to prove useful in determining the flattening of the Galactic halo.

5 pages, Latex, 2 postscript figures, Published in: ApJ Lett. 491, L11, 1997

Cited by in corpus (46)

• The MACHO Project: Microlensing Results from 5.7 Years of LMC Observations
• Limits on the Macho Content of the Galactic Halo from the EROS-2 Survey of the Magellanic Clouds
• Acceleration and Parallax Effects in Gravitational Microlensing
• Observations of the Binary Microlens Event MACHO-98-SMC-1 by the Microlensing Planet Search Collaboration
• QSO Selection Algorithm Using Time Variability and Machine Learning: Selection of 1,620 QSO Candidates from MACHO LMC Database
• The MACHO Project LMC Variable Star Inventory: X. The R Coronae Borealis Stars
• Self-Lensing Models of the LMC
• The MACHO Project: Microlensing Detection Efficiency
• Isochrones and Luminosity Functions for Old White Dwarfs
• Probing Red Giant Atmospheres with Gravitational Microlensing
• Limits on the microlens mass function of Q2237+0305
• Discovery and Characterization of a Caustic Crossing Microlensing Event in the SMC
• Microlensing as a probe of the Galactic structure; 20 years of microlensing optical depth studies
• Supervised detection of anomalous light-curves in massive astronomical catalogs
• Low frequency gravitational waves from black hole MACHO binaries
• Hydrogen model atmospheres for white dwarf stars
• The OGLE View of Microlensing towards the Magellanic Clouds. II. OGLE-II SMC data
• An improved quasar detection method in EROS-2 and MACHO LMC datasets
• Microlens Parallaxes with SIRTF
• Microlensing towards the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Gravitational Microlensing - A Report on the MACHO Project
• Discovery of a Very Bright, Nearby Gravitational Microlensing Event
• On the Nature and Location of the Microlenses
• Spectroscopy of MACHO 97-SMC-1: self-lensing within the SMC
• Limits on the Transverse Velocity of the Lensing Galaxy in Q2237+0305 from the Lack of Strong Microlensing Variability
• Microlens Parallax Asymmetries Toward the LMC
• Finite-source and finite-lens effects in astrometric microlensing
• Not enough stellar mass Machos in the Galactic halo
• Searching for Machos (and other Dark Matter Candidates) in a Simulated Galaxy
• Using Astrometry to Deblend Microlensing Events
• An Observational Test of Dark Matter as Cold Fractal Clouds
• Microlensing optical depth, event rate, and limits on compact objects in dark matter based on 20 yr of OGLE observations of the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Optimal Microlensing Observations
• Flattened Galactic Haloes and Baryonic Dark Matter
• Removing the Microlensing Blending-Parallax Degeneracy Using Source Variability
• Magnitude bias of microlensed sources towards the Large Magellanic Cloud
• The Galactic Halo from Microlensing
• Microlensing in the Small Magellanic Cloud: Lessons from an N-body Simulation
• Omega_B and Omega_0 From MACHOs and Local Group Dynamics
• On the robustness of the microlensing optical depth as a measure of MACHO density
• Probing the mass function of halo dark matter via microlensing
• Identifying low-amplitude pulsating stars through microlensing observations
• Non-radially pulsating stars as microlensing sources
• First release of PLATO consortium stellar limb-darkening coefficients
• On the Baseline Flux Determination of Microlensing Events Detectable with the Difference Image Analysis Method
• A Catalog of Stellar and Dust Properties for 500,000 Stars in the Southwest Bar of the Small Magellanic Cloud