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Distance of a Microlensing Event Measured For the First Time
astroengine writes For the first time, astronomers have combined the observational power of a ground-based survey with a space telescope to measure the distance to a stellar-mass object that was detected through a chance microlensing event. In a new paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, astronomer Jennifer Yee of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), Mass., led the study focusing on the detection of the microlensing event called "OGLE-2014-BLG-0939." Detected by the 1.3 meter Warsaw Telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile and alerted through the Optical Gravitational Lens Experiment (OGLE) community on May 28, 2014, Yee's team seized the opportunity to use NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to focus on the transient brightening. Both telescopes recorded a light curve of the event and was therefore able to derive the distance to the dark lens.
We may never fully understand the nature of our universe, and almost certainly will never understand it in our lifetimes. But the question raised in the topic is actually a fundamental one that spans far beyond dark matter to all forms of theoritical science. Many theories are based heavily upon other theories. The "root" theories (with any luck) will eventually be proven or disproven, affecting all research and theories which follow that "root".
For instance, if I find a pinecone lying on the ground under a pine tree, the simplest explanation is that it fell off of the pine tree. Sure, it might have been planted there by invisible space aliens in conjunction with the Illuminati acting in strict accordance with the Masonic doctrine of the Coming of the Pine Cone King, but since there is no evidence to favor one explanation over the other, I should assume that it fell off of the pine tree.
This of course ignores that if there were a deity that created beings, endowed them with the capacity for logic, failed to provide evidence of its own existence, then punished those beings that failed to believe in it, said deity would be sick and twisted, not deserving of worship but in need of intense psychotherapy.
Now you don't have to RTFA.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
This is known as microlensing parallax, and was first done 1995. Parallax breaks lensing degeneracies, enabling the determination of distance,
Now, you may quibble about this particular distance measurement, but it's been done for 20 years now. Routinely. And, yes, its been done from space before too.
My guess is that some needed qualifiers were lost between the astronomer's mouth and the headline writers keyboard, but it ain't first.
I am currently a sophomore in high school, and have recently gotten very interested in Physics, Programming, and the study of space. Is there any advice for an aspiring astronomer that you feel would be particularly helpful?
If gravity waves exist there should be gravitational lenses that oscillate in time to the frequency of the gravitational wave. I have never heard of a variably lensed object of the sort you would expect, why is that?