UKIRT MICROLENSING SURVEYS AS A PATHFINDER FOR WFIRST: THE DETECTION OF FIVE HIGHLY EXTINGUISHED LOW-|b| EVENTS
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109 (United States)
- Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy, Königstuhl 17, D-69117 Heidelberg (Germany)
- Kepler and K2 Missions, NASA Ames Research Center, P.O. Box 1, M/S 244-30, Moffett Field, CA 94035 (United States)
- NASA Exoplanet Science Institute, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
Optical microlensing surveys are restricted from detecting events near the Galactic plane and center, where the event rate is thought to be the highest due to the high optical extinction of these fields. In the near-infrared (NIR), however, the lower extinction leads to a corresponding increase in event detections and is a primary driver for the wavelength coverage of the WFIRST microlensing survey. During the 2015 and 2016 bulge observing seasons, we conducted NIR microlensing surveys with UKIRT in conjunction with and in support of the Spitzer and Kepler microlensing campaigns. Here, we report on five highly extinguished (A{sub H}=0.81--1.97), low-Galactic latitude (−0.98⩽b⩽−0.36) microlensing events discovered from our 2016 survey. Four of them were monitored with an hourly cadence by optical surveys but were not reported as discoveries, likely due to the high extinction. Our UKIRT surveys and suggested future NIR surveys enable the first measurement of the microlensing event rate in the NIR. This wavelength regime overlaps with the bandpass of the filter in which the WFIRST microlensing survey will conduct its highest-cadence observations, making this event rate derivation critically important for optimizing its yield.
- OSTI ID:
- 22863146
- Journal Information:
- The Astronomical Journal (Online), Vol. 153, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1538-3881
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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