A Next Generation Microlensing Survey of the LMC

An NOAO Long Term Survey with the MOSAIC Imager on the Blanco 4 meter telescope


We have undertaken a project to monitor tens of millions of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a neighboring
galaxy, to search for the distinctive brightening of stars that is the signature of gravitational microlensing. This
project is a successor to the MACHO Project which ran for a decade at the Mt. Stromlo Observatory in Australia.

Our goal is to ascertain the nature of the mysterious population of objects that is responsible for producing the
observed excess of microlensing events in the LMC.  An non-technical description (PDF) of the project is available here.
A copy of our original NOAO observing proposal (PostScript) is accessible as well.


This image shows the layout of our fields across the bar and disk of the LMC. Our primary (green) and secondary (red) field centers are shown as boxes with the field of view of the MOSAIC imager. We cover the 52 primary fields each half night we observe, and as many of the secondary fields as sky brightness allows. The exposure times are optimized to maximize the number of observed stars per half night.

A listing of field centers and default exposure times is available here.

Data Products:

Jan 10, 2002: Detection of a Supernova Behind the LMC

RA = 05:40:46.06 DEC = -71:51:15.3

FITS file with WCS coords (N up E left)

An Extended LMC astrometric catalog, by field (soon).

The Team


 
 
Christopher Stubbs University of Washington stubbs@astro.washington.edu
Armin Rest University of Washington rest@astro.washington.edu
Ricardo Covarrubias University of Washington ricardo@astro.washington.edu
Andrew Becker Bell Labs/Lucent acbecker@lucent.com
Prof. Alejandro Clocchiati Universidad Catholica de Chile aclocchi@astro.puc.cl
Kem Cook Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory kcook@igpp.ucllnl.org
Chris Smith Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory/NOAO csmith@ctio.noao.edu
Knut Olsen Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory/NOAO kolsen@ctio.noao.edu
Douglas Welch McMaster University, Canada welch@physics.mcmaster.ca

Focus settings Table (PostScript)

Observing Procedures (PostScript)

Excel file for optimization of exposure times, accompanying documentation.

MACHO project database access

Powerpoint talk on reduction pipeline (MS PPT)