927 research outputs found
Sgr A* Companion S0-2: A Probe of Very High-Mass Star Formation
The star S0-2, which is orbiting Sgr A* with a 15-yr period, almost certainly
did not form in situ. We propose that it was injected into this close orbit by
the tidal disruption of a massive-star binary, whose primary was more massive
than S0-2 and at least 60 Msun. From numerical integrations we find that 1-2%
of incoming binaries with closest approach equal to 130 AU leave the secondary
in an orbit with eccentricity within 0.01 of that of SO-2. If additional stars
are found orbiting Sgr A* with relatively short periods, they could be used to
probe the formation of massive stars in the Galactocentric region, even though
the massive stars themselves have long since perished.Comment: Submitted to ApJ, 12 pages including 2 figure
Astrometric Resolution of Severely Degenerate Binary Microlensing Events
We investigate whether the "close/wide" class of degeneracies in
caustic-crossing binary microlensing events can be broken astrometrically.
Dominik showed that these degeneracies are particularly severe because they
arise from a degeneracy in the lens equation itself rather than a mere
"accidental" mimicking of one light curve by another. A massive observing
campaign of five microlensing collaborations was unable to break this
degeneracy photometrically in the case of the binary lensing event MACHO
98-SMC-1. We show that this degeneracy indeed causes the image centroids of the
wide and close solutions to follow an extremely similar pattern of motion
during the time when the source is in or near the caustic. Nevertheless, the
two image centroids are displaced from one another and this displacement is
detectable by observing the event at late times. Photometric degeneracies
therefore can be resolved astrometrically, even for these most severe cases.Comment: 11 pages, including 4 figures. Submitted to Ap
Einstein Radii from Binary Lensing Events
We show that the Einstein ring radius and transverse speed of a lens
projected on the source plane, and , can be
determined from the light curve of a binary-source event, followed by the
spectroscopic determination of the orbital elements of the source stars. The
determination makes use of the same principle that allows one to measure the
Einstein ring radii from finite-source effects. For the case when the orbital
period of the source stars is much longer than the Einstein time scale, , there exists a single two-fold degeneracy in determining
. However, when the degeneracy can
often be broken by making use of the binary-source system's orbital motion.
%Once , and thus are determined, one can
%distinguish self-lensing events in the Large Magellanic Cloud %from Galactic
halo events. For an identifiable 8\% of all lensing events seen toward the
Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), one can unambiguously determine whether the
lenses are Galactic, or whether they lie in the LMC itself. The required
observations can be made after the event is over and could be carried out for
the events seen by Alcock et al.\ and Aubourg et al.. In addition, we
propose to include eclipsing binaries as sources for gravitational lensing
experiments.Comment: 18 pages, revised version, submitted to Ap
Microlens Parallaxes with SIRTF
The Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) will drift away from the Earth
at about 0.1 AU/yr. Microlensing events will therefore have different
characteristics as seen from the satellite and the Earth. From the difference,
it is possible in principle to measure v-tilde, the transverse velocity of the
lens projected onto the observer plane. Since v-tilde has very different values
for different populations (disk, halo, Large Magellanic Cloud), such
measurements could help identify the location, and hence the nature, of the
lenses. I show that the method previously developed by Gould for measuring such
satellite parallaxes fails completely in the case of SIRTF: it is overwhelmed
by degeneracies which arise from fact that the Earth and satellite observations
are in different band passes. I develop a new method which allows for
observations in different band passes and yet removes all degeneracies. The
method combines a purely ground-based measurement of the "parallax asymmetry"
with a measurement of the delay between the time the event peaks at the Earth
and satellite. In effect, the parallax asymmetry determines the component of
v-tilde in the Earth-Sun direction, while the delay time measures the component
of v-tilde in the direction of the Earth's orbit.Comment: 21 pages plus 3 figure
Optimal Microlensing Observations
One of the major limitations of microlensing observations toward the Large
Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is the low rate of event detection. What can be done to
improve this rate? Is it better to invest telescope time in more frequent
observations of the inner high surface-brightness fields, or in covering new,
less populated outer fields? How would a factor 2 improvement in CCD
sensitivity affect the detection efficiency? Would a series of major (factor
2--4) upgrades in telescope aperture, seeing, sky brightness, camera size, and
detector efficiency increase the event rate by a huge factor, or only
marginally? I develop a simplified framework to address these questions. With
observational resources fixed at the level of the MACHO and EROS experiments,
the biggest improvement (factor ~2) would come by reducing the time spent on
the inner ~25 deg^2 and applying it to the outer ~100 deg^2. By combining this
change with the characteristics of a good medium-size telescope (2.5 m mirror,
1" point spread function, thinned CCD chips, 1 deg^2 camera, and dark sky), it
should be possible to increase the detection of LMC events to more than 100 per
year (assuming current estimates of the optical depth apply to the entire LMC).Comment: Submitted to ApJ, 13 pages plus 3 figure
Three New Cool Brown Dwarfs Discovered with the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and an Improved Spectrum of the Y0 Dwarf WISE J041022.71+150248.4
As part of a larger search of Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) data
for cool brown dwarfs with effective temperatures less than 1000 K, we present
the discovery of three new cool brown dwarfs with spectral types later than T7.
Using low-resolution, near-infrared spectra obtained with the NASA Infrared
Telescope Facility and the Hubble Space Telescope we derive spectral types of
T9.5 for WISE J094305.98+360723.5, T8 for WISE J200050.19+362950.1, and Y0: for
WISE J220905.73+271143.9. The identification of WISE J220905.73+271143.9 as a Y
dwarf brings the total number of spectroscopically confirmed Y dwarfs to
seventeen. In addition, we present an improved spectrum (i.e. higher
signal-to-noise ratio) of the Y0 dwarf WISE J041022.71+150248.4 that confirms
the Cushing et al. classification of Y0. Spectrophotometric distance estimates
place all three new brown dwarfs at distances less than 12 pc, with WISE
J200050.19+362950.1 lying at a distance of only 3.9-8.0 pc. Finally, we note
that brown dwarfs like WISE J200050.19+362950.1 that lie in or near the
Galactic plane offer an exciting opportunity to measure their mass via
astrometric microlensing.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journa
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