AAS 204th Meeting, June 2004
Session 62 Protoplanets, Star Formation and Debris Disks
Poster, Wednesday, June 2, 2004, 10:00am-7:00pm, Ballroom

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[62.02] More lessons from OGLE-2002-BLG-055: Optimizing observing strategy to minimize mass ratio uncertainties in planetary microlensing

M. J. Collinge (Princeton University)

OGLE-2002-BLG-055 is a well known microlensing event that shows a short timescale deviation from a standard point lens light curve, as might be expected from a binary lens with an extreme mass ratio such as a star-planet system. Because the deviation consists primarily of a single (secure) data point, a unique characterization of the event is not possible. Jaroszynski & Paczynski (2002, AcA, 52, 361) used this to argue for a modification of OGLE observing strategy to obtain immediate high-cadence monitoring of further events showing deviations from simple point lens light curves. A real-time alert system has since been implemented. Recently Gaudi & Han (astro-ph/0402417) showed that the available data cannot exclude binary lenses with a wide range of mass ratios, and indeed that the binary lens interpretation may not be completely secure. We pose a different question: If the alert system had been in place during the 2002 observing season, and assuming that the event was due to a binary lens, how frequently should the event have been monitored in order to minimize model degeneracies, and how precisely could the mass ratio have been measured? We discuss the implications for future similar events with a range of intrinsic timescales.


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