Published November 10, 2017 | Version Submitted + Published
Journal Article Open

An Isolated Microlens Observed from K2, Spitzer, and Earth

Abstract

We present the result of microlensing event MOA-2016-BLG-290, which received observations from the two-wheel Kepler (K2), Spitzer, as well as ground-based observatories. A joint analysis of data from K2 and the ground leads to two degenerate solutions of the lens mass and distance. This degeneracy is effectively broken once the (partial) Spitzer light curve is included. Altogether, the lens is found to be an extremely low-mass star or brown dwarf (77^(+34)_(-23) M_J) located in the Galactic bulge (6.8 ± 0.4 kpc). MOA-2016-BLG-290 is the first microlensing event for which we have signals from three well-separated (~1 au) locations. It demonstrates the power of two-satellite microlensing experiment in reducing the ambiguity of lens properties, as pointed out independently by S. Refsdal and A. Gould several decades ago.

Additional Information

© 2017 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2017 September 25; revised 2017 October 13; accepted 2017 October 13; published 2017 November 8. Work by W.Z. and A.G. were supported by NSF grant AST-1516842. Work by S.C.N. and A.G. were supported by JPL grant 1500811. R.P. acknowledges support from K2 Guest Observer program under NASA grant NNX17AF72G. Work by Y.S. was supported by an appointment to the NASA Postdoctoral Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, administered by Universities Space Research Association through a contract with NASA. Work by C.R. was supported by an appointment to the NASA Postdoctoral Program at the Goddard Space Flight Center, administered by USRA through a contract with NASA. This Letter includes data collected by the Kepler mission. Funding for the Kepler mission is provided by the NASA Science Mission directorate. Some of the data presented in this paper were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. Support for MAST for non-HST data is provided by the NASA Office of Space Science via grant NNX09AF08G and by other grants and contracts. The OGLE project has received funding from the National Science Centre, Poland, grant MAESTRO 2014/14/A/ST9/00121 to A.U. The MOA project is supported by JSPS Kakenhi grants JP24253004, JP26247023, JP16H06287, JP23340064, and JP15H00781 and by the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Grant MAU1104.

Attached Files

Published - Zhu_2017_ApJL_849_L31.pdf

Submitted - 1709.09959.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
83066
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20171108-104512857

Related works

Funding

NSF
AST-1516842
JPL
1500811
NASA
NNX17AF72G
NASA Postdoctoral Program
NASA
NAS5-26555
NASA
NNX09AF08G
National Science Centre (Poland)
2014/14/A/ST9/00121
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
JP24253004
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
JP26247023
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
JP16H06287
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
JP23340064
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
JP15H00781
Royal Society of New Zealand
MAU1104

Dates

Created
2017-11-08
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-15
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)