Microlensing Search for Exoplanets

[Roger Dymock]

A new version of the project document us available at https://britastro.org/sites/default/files/Microlensing%20pro-am%20project%20-%20version%203.pdf.

Now that the nights are getting longer you have more opportunity to participate in this project!!!

[Dr Paul Leyland]

I observed some targets from Roger’s most recent alert list. There were a few issues which I believe are now mostly sorted. In particular, Astrometrica would not play ball so I used my regular BAA-VSS pipeline. To do that, I had to build my own comparison star photometry file from the APASS catalogue, itself downloaded from a link provided by Roger. The script to make that file is available on request.

First result: at 2021-07-07 23:00, Gaia21au was CV=16.72 ± 0.05 and V=17.00 ±0.10

Some of the fields are very crowded and aperture photometry likely won’t be sufficient. PSF fitting, e.g. by DAOPHOT should work but that will be another can of worms to explore.

Anyone in the VSS wish to comment?  In particular, should these observations be uploaded to the database?

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