分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19
摘要: We present the analysis of high resolution follow-up observations of OGLE-2016-BLG-1195 using Keck, four years after the event's peak. We find the lens system to be at $D_L = 6.87\pm 0.65$ kpc and comprised of a $M_{\rm p} = 9.91\pm 1.61\ M_{\rm Earth}$ planet, orbiting an M-dwarf, $M_{\rm L} = 0.57\pm 0.06\ M_{\odot}$, beyond the snow line, with a projected separation of $r_\perp=2.62\pm 0.28$ AU. Our results are consistent with the discovery paper, which reports values with 1-sigma uncertainties based on a single mass-distance constraint from finite source effects. However, both the discovery paper and our follow-up results disagree with the analysis of a different group that also present the planetary signal detection. The latter utilizes Spitzer photometry to measure a parallax signal. Combined with finite source effects, they claim to measure the mass and distance of the system to much greater accuracy, suggesting that it is composed of an Earth-mass planet orbiting an ultracool dwarf. Their parallax signal though is improbable since it suggests a lens star in the disk moving perpendicular to disk rotation. Moreover, parallaxes are known to be affected by systematic errors in the photometry. Therefore, we reanalyze the Spitzer photometry for this event and conclude that the parallax signal is not significantly greater than the instrumental noise, and is likely affected by systematic errors in the photometric data. The results of this paper act as a cautionary tale that conclusions of analyses that rely heavily on low signal-to-noise Spitzer photometric data, can be misleading.
分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19
摘要: We report new results for the gravitational microlensing target OGLE-2011-BLG-0950 from adaptive optics (AO) images using the Keck observatory. The original analysis by Choi et al. 2012 reports degenerate solutions between planetary and stellar binary lens systems. This is due to a degeneracy in high magnification events where the shape of the light curve peak can be explained by a source approach to two different cusp geometries with different source radius crossing times. This particular case is the most important type of degeneracy for exoplanet demographics, because the distinction between a planetary mass or stellar binary companion has direct consequences for microlensing exoplanet statistics. The 8 and 10-year baselines between the event and the Keck observations allow us to directly measure a relative proper motion of $4.20\pm 0.21\,$mas/yr, which confirms the detection of the lens star system and directly rules out the planetary companion models that predict a ${\sim}4 \times$ smaller relative proper motion. The combination of the lens brightness and close stellar binary light curve parameters yield primary and secondary star masses of $M_{A} = 1.12^{+0.06}_{-0.04}M_\odot$ and $M_{B} = 0.47^{+0.04}_{-0.03}M_\odot$ at a distance of $D_L = 6.70^{+0.55}_{-0.30}\,$kpc, and a primary-secondary projected separation of $0.39^{+0.05}_{-0.04}\,$AU. Since this degeneracy is likely to be common, the high resolution imaging method described here will be used to disentangle the central caustic cusp approach degeneracy for events observed by the \textit{Roman} exoplanet microlensing survey using the \textit{Roman} images taken near the beginning or end of the survey.
分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19
摘要: Images obtained with single-conjugate adaptive optics (AO) show spatial variation of the point spread function (PSF) due to both atmospheric anisoplanatism and instrumental aberrations. The poor knowledge of the PSF across the field of view strongly impacts the ability to take full advantage of AO capabilities. The AIROPA project aims to model these PSF variations for the NIRC2 imager at the Keck Observatory. Here, we present the characterization of the instrumental phase aberrations over the entire NIRC2 field of view and we present a new metric for quantifying the quality of the calibration, the fraction of variance unexplained (FVU). We used phase diversity measurements obtained on an artificial light source to characterize the variation of the aberrations across the field of view and their evolution with time. We find that there is a daily variation of the wavefront error (RMS of the residuals is 94~nm) common to the whole detector, but the differential aberrations across the field of view are very stable (RMS of the residuals between different epochs is 59~nm). This means that instrumental calibrations need to be monitored often only at the center of the detector, and the much more time-consuming variations across the field of view can be characterized less frequently (most likely when hardware upgrades happen). Furthermore, we tested AIROPA's instrumental model through real data of the fiber images on the detector. We find that modeling the PSF variations across the field of view improves the FVU metric by 60\% and reduces the detection of fake sources by 70\%.