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Credit & Copyright: The MACHO Collaboration
Explanation:
If a star in this photograph twinkled slightly,
would anyone notice? Would anyone care? Astronomers with the
MACHO Collaboration noticed one such twinkle
just last week, and many members of the
astronomical community now care.
The specific type of sparkling of the
SMC star in the above cross-hairs
clearly indicated a multiple-star microlensing event was in progress.
Microlensing is a rare phenomena where
gravity itself deflects light so prominently that
background sources might appear to have
many images and appear
many times their normal brightness.
Study of the
precise
details of the latter part of this
microlensing
event might reveal the mass and distance to the lenses.
Were these lenses in the outer reaches of our
Galactic halo, this would add evidence to some
controversial indications that a good fraction of the normally
unseen matter in
our Galaxy
is composed of lenses only slightly less massive than
our Sun.
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NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: microlensing - Milky Way - MACHO
Publications with words: microlensing - Milky Way - MACHO
See also:
- APOD: 2024 November 24 Á Journey to the Center of the Galaxy
- APOD: 2024 November 5 Á Milky Way over Easter Island
- APOD: 2024 August 4 Á Gaia: Here Comes the Sun
- APOD: 2024 July 29 Á Milky Way over Uluru
- APOD: 2024 May 29 Á Stairway to the Milky Way
- APOD: 2023 December 12 Á Aurora and Milky Way over Norway
- Milky Way Rising