Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010aas...21560622s&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #215, #606.22; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 36, p.1133
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Here we discuss a project to make the first potential detection of isolated stellar-mass black holes (BHs) in the Milky Way, and to determine their masses. Until now, the only directly measured BH masses have come from radial-velocity measurements of X-ray binaries. Our proposed method uses the astrometric shifts that occur when a Galactic-bulge microlensing event is caused by a BH lens. Out of the hundreds of bulge microlensing events found annually by the OGLE and MOA surveys, a few are found to have very long durations (>200 days). It is generally believed that the majority of these long-duration events are caused by lenses that are isolated BHs. To test this hypothesis, we have an approved HST proposal to cary out high-precision astrometry of a few long-duration events, using WFC3. The expected astrometric signal from a BH lens is detectable with HST. The proposed observations will potentially lead to the first unambiguous detection of isolated stellar-mass BHs, and the first direct mass measurement for isolated stellar-mass BHs through any technique. Detection of several BHs will provide information on the frequency of BHs in the Galaxy.
Anderson Jeffrey
Bond Howard
Dominik Martin
Sahu Kailash C.
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