A Brown Dwarf Microlens Candidate from the Second Phase of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment

Details A Brown Dwarf Microlens Candidate from the Second Phase of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment A Brown Dwarf Microlens Candidate from the Second Phase of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment

Mar 2003

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003apj...585l..65s&link_type=abstract

The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 585, Issue 1, pp. L65-L68.

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

10

Cosmology: Gravitational Lensing, Stars: Individual: Alphanumeric: Sc26_2218, Stars: Low-Mass, Brown Dwarfs

Scientific paper

We describe a unique mass determination for a microlensing event from the second phase of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment. The event, sc26_2218, which is very bright (baseline magnitude I=15.10), appears to exhibit both parallax and finite-source effects. The parallax effect allows us to determine the projected Einstein radius on the observer plane (rE~3.8 AU), while the finite-source effect allows us to determine the ratio of the angular source size and the angular Einstein radius. As the angular size of the star can be estimated using its color and magnitude, we can hence determine the angular Einstein radius θE~0.1 mas. By combining rE and θE, we can determine the lens mass M~0.050+0.016 -0.011Msolar, independent of the source distance. The lens is therefore a brown dwarf candidate, located at a distance of ~6.5 kpc. However, the ``parallax'' signature is weak, and so we cannot completely discount the possibility that these signatures originate from binary rotation of the source (which would prevent any estimate of the lens mass) rather than parallax. However, this can be tested by future spectroscopic observations. This event highlights the scientific returns for intense monitoring of bright microlensing events, since the parallax and finite-source effects can be more easily identified because of their high signal-to-noise ratios.

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