2002/03/19 by David S. Graff, Andrew Gould · 1 citation
Engineering · Medicine · Physics and Astronomy · #Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing #Advanced optical system design #Ophthalmology and Visual Impairment Studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/343128
published as Astrophys.J. 580 (2002) 253-260 · 8 pages emulateapj style, 4 figures, Submitted to ApJ
arxiv created 2002/03/19 · openalex publication_date 2002/11/20 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Caustic-crossing binary lenses make up about 5% of all detected microlenses. The relative proper motion of a caustic-crossing binary lens can be measured with observations from a single terrestrial telescope. Thus, uniquely, binary lenses can be completely solved with only the addition of a measurement of the microlensing parallax. This solution will yield the mass, distance, and transverse velocity of the lens relative to the source. To date, only one of the ~1000 observed microlensing events has been so solved. We examine the ability of a parallax satellite combined with ground-based observations to solve these events. To measure both components of the vector parallax, the lens must be observed near two different caustics. Thus, the final accuracy is determined mostly by whether one can intensively monitor part of the first caustic crossing, by the magnification pattern, and by the path of the source with respect to the lens geometry. We find that vector parallaxes can be measured far more easily for binary lenses than single lenses, requiring 1-3 orders of magnitude fewer photons. They may thus yield a large number of completely solved lenses relatively cheaply.