VISTA KS photometry of EWS 2012-BLG-548

DOI

We report the discovery of a large timescale candidate microlensing event of a bulge stellar source based on near-infrared observations with the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea Survey (VVV). The new microlensing event is projected only 3.5 arcmin away from the center of the globular cluster NGC 6553. The source appears to be a bulge giant star with magnitude K_s_=13.52, based on the position in the color-magnitude diagram. The foreground lens may be located in the globular cluster, which has well-known parameters such as distance and proper motions. If the lens is a cluster member, we can directly estimate its mass simply following Paczynski which is a modified version of the more general case due to Refsdal. In that case, the lens would be a massive stellar remnant, with M=1.5-3.5M_{sun}_. If the blending fraction of the microlensing event appears to be small, and this lens would represent a good isolated black hole (BH) candidate, that would be the oldest BH known. Alternative explanations (with a larger blending fraction) also point to a massive stellar remnant if the lens is located in the Galactic disk and does not belong to the globular cluster.

Identifier
DOI http://doi.org/10.26093/cds/vizier.18109020
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/810/L20
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/810/L20
Related Identifier http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/810/L20
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/810/L20
Provenance
Creator Minniti D.; Contreras Ramos R.; Alonso-Garcia J.; Anguita T.; Catelan M.,Gran F.; Motta V.; Muro G.; Rojas K.; Saito R.K.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2016
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysical Processes; Astrophysics and Astronomy; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics; Stellar Astronomy