Bibcode
Bennett, D. P.; Udalski, Andrzej; Bond, Ian A.; Suzuki, Daisuke; Ryu, Yoon-Hyun; Abe, Fumio; Barry, Richard K.; Bhattacharya, Aparna; Donachie, Martin; Fukui, A.; Hirao, Yuki; Kawasaki, Kohei; Kondo, Iona; Koshimoto, Naoki; Li, Man Cheung Alex; Matsubara, Yutaka; Miyazaki, Shota; Muraki, Yasushi; Nagakane, Masayuki; Ohnishi, Koji; Ranc, Clément; Rattenbury, Nicholas J.; Suematsu, Haruno; Sumi, Takahiro; Tristram, Paul J.; Yonehara, Atsunori; The MOA Collaboration; Szymański, Michał K.; Soszyński, Igor; Wyrzykowski, Łukasz; Ulaczyk, Krzysztof; Poleski, Radek; Kozłowski, Szymon; Pietrukowicz, Paweł; Skowron, Jan; The OGLE Collaboration; Shvartzvald, Yossi; Maoz, Dan; Kaspi, Shai; Friedmann, Matan; The Wise Group; Batista, Virginie; DePoy, Darren; Dong, Subo; Gaudi, B. Scott; Gould, Andrew; Han, Cheongho; Pogge, Richard W.; Tan, Thiam-Guan; Yee, Jennifer C.; The μFUN Collaboration
Bibliographical reference
The Astronomical Journal, Volume 156, Issue 3, article id. 113, 11 pp. (2018).
Advertised on:
9
2018
Citations
23
Refereed citations
17
Description
We present the analysis of the planetary microlensing event
MOA-2011-BLG-291, which has a mass ratio of q = (3.8 ± 0.7)
× 10‑4 and a source star that is redder (or
brighter) than the bulge main sequence. This event is located at a low
Galactic latitude in the survey area that is currently planned for
NASA’s Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) exoplanet
microlensing survey. This unusual color for a microlensed source star
implies that we cannot assume that the source star is in the Galactic
bulge. The favored interpretation is that the source star is a lower
main-sequence star at a distance of D S = 4.9 ± 1.3
kpc in the Galactic disk. However, the source could also be a turn-off
star on the far side of the bulge or a subgiant in the far side of the
Galactic disk if it experiences significantly more reddening than the
bulge red clump stars. However, these possibilities have only a small
effect on our mass estimates for the host star and planet. We find host
star and planet masses of
{M}host}={0.15}-0.10+0.27
{M}ȯ and
{m}p={18}-12+34 {M}\oplus
from a Bayesian analysis with a standard Galactic model, under the
assumption that the planet hosting probability does not depend on the
host mass or distance. However, if we attempt to measure the host and
planet masses with host star brightness measurements from high angular
resolution follow-up imaging, the implied masses will be sensitive to
the host star distance. The WFIRST exoplanet microlensing survey is
expected to use this method to determine the masses for many of the
planetary systems that it discovers, so this issue has important design
implications for the WFIRST exoplanet microlensing survey.