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A. Rest (University of Washington)
The MACHO collaboration has reported a microlensing event rate towards the LMC that exceeds that expected from known visible components of our Galaxy. Possible explanations include (1) the existence of a population of massive Galactic compact halo objects, (2) disk-bar or bar-bar self-lensing of the LMC, (3) an intervening dwarf galaxy or tidal tails, or (4) lensing by a previously undetected thick disk component of the Milky Way. The Supermacho project, a next generation microlensing search towards the LMC, aims to differentiate between these explanations. We have used the first year of data from the Supermacho project to predict microlensing event rates for the different explanations. We find that this survey will detect enough events to measure the spatial variation in the event rate, which is a more robust discriminator between the various models.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: rest@astro.washington.edu
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 34, #4
© 2002. The American Astronomical Soceity.