Understanding Halo Microlensing and Variable Stars in M31: 1} Snapshot Survey of Candidates

Details Understanding Halo Microlensing and Variable Stars in M31: 1} Snapshot Survey of Candidates Understanding Halo Microlensing and Variable Stars in M31: 1} Snapshot Survey of Candidates

Dec 1997

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1997hst..prop.7376c&link_type=abstract

HST Proposal ID #7376

Other

Hst Proposal Id #7376 Galaxies

Scientific paper

We discovered 6 microlensing candidates affecting stars in M31 and presumably due to sub-solar-mass MACHOs, in a survey of the M31 and Galactic halos. HST can test the veracity of these events by independently finding their baseline magnitudes. HST can also determine the luminosity function in our survey sample and allow us to find the contribution of MACHOs to the dark matter in M31 and the Galaxy and produce strong constraints complementary to other MACHO searches in our Galaxy's halo alone. Our survey is unique in allowing lensing to be studied at locations throughout a galaxy, allowing halo spatial distribution models for the halo to be tested. Furthermore, we can reach unprecendentedly small MACHO masses and determine them much more accurately than in competing surveys. Unfortunately, our lensing sample might be confused with short period miras which mock lensing lightcurves when sampled infrequently. HST can show whether our rejection criteria for these events succeed in differentiating miras from lenses. Since our sample involves stars that are crowded in ground-based images, we also need HST to allow us to determine the luminosity function of stars in the field, thereby determining the number of possible lensing sources, and converting our detected event rates into actual MACHO number densities. Simultaneously we can explored the stellar population in the relatively unexplored disk/bulge transition via its variable stars, luminosity function and color- magnitude diagram.

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