INTERPRETATION OF A SHORT-TERM ANOMALY IN THE GRAVITATIONAL MICROLENSING EVENT MOA-2012-BLG-486 Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • A planetary microlensing signal is generally characterized by a short-term perturbation to the standard single lensing light curve. A subset of binary-source events can produce perturbations that mimic planetary signals, thereby introducing an ambiguity between the planetary and binary-source interpretations. In this paper, we present the analysis of the microlensing event MOA-2012-BLG-486, for which the light curve exhibits a short-lived perturbation. Routine modeling not considering data taken in different passbands yields a best-fit planetary model that is slightly preferred over the best-fit binary-source model. However, when allowed for a change in the color during the perturbation, we find that the binary-source model yields a significantly better fit and thus the degeneracy is clearly resolved. This event not only signifies the importance of considering various interpretations of short-term anomalies, but also demonstrates the importance of multi-band data for checking the possibility of false-positive planetary signals. 2013. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved..

published proceedings

  • ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL

altmetric score

  • 1.75

author list (cited authors)

  • Hwang, K., Choi, J., Bond, I. A., Sumi, T., Han, C., Gaudi, B. S., ... Street, R. A.

citation count

  • 34

complete list of authors

  • Hwang, K-H||Choi, J-Y||Bond, IA||Sumi, T||Han, C||Gaudi, BS||Gould, A||Bozza, V||Beaulieu, J-P||Tsapras, Y||Abe, F||Bennett, DP||Botzler, CS||Chote, P||Freeman, M||Fukui, A||Fukunaga, D||Harris, P||Itow, Y||Koshimoto, N||Ling, CH||Masuda, K||Matsubara, Y||Muraki, Y||Namba, S||Ohnishi, K||Rattenbury, NJ||Saito, To||Sullivan, DJ||Sweatman, WL||Suzuki, D||Tristram, PJ||Wada, K||Yamai, N||Yock, PCM||Yonehara, A||Andrade de Almeida, L||DePoy, DL||Dong, Subo||Jablonski, F||Jung, YK||Kavka, A||Lee, C-U||Park, H||Pogge, RW||Shin, I-G||Yee, JC||Albrow, MD||Bachelet, E||Batista, V||Brillant, S||Caldwell, JAR||Cassan, A||Cole, A||Cirrakes, E||Coutures, Ch||Dieters, S||Prester, D Dominis||Donatowicz, J||Fouque, P||Greenhill, J||Jorgensen, UG||Kane, SR||Kubas, D||Marquette, J-B||Martin, R||Meintjes, P||Menzies, J||Pollard, KR||Williams, A||Wouters, D||Bramich, DM||Dominik, M||Horne, K||Browne, P||Hundertmark, M||Ipatov, S||Kains, N||Snodgrass, C||Steele, IA||Street, RA

publication date

  • November 2013