[Astrophysical Journal] Microlensing surveys suggest the presence of a surprisingly large population of free-floating planets, with a rate of about two Neptunes per star.
microlensing
Posted inAstrochemistry, Astronomy & Telescopes, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gas Giants, Ice Giant, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Press Release
NASA’s Roman Mission Preps to Unveil New Populations of Faraway Worlds
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is poised to make a major leap in the hunt for worlds outside our solar system, known as exoplanets. Scientists expect the mission to […]
Posted inAstrochemistry, Astrogeology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report
A Break In Planet Occurrence Near The Pebble Isolation Mass Should Be Observable By The Roman Microlensing Survey
Microlensing detections are uniquely well-suited to probing the population of planets outside the water iceline, down to planetary masses comparable to the Earth.
Posted inAstronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Interstellar, Status Report
Laying the Foundation for a Comprehensive View of Transiting Exoplanets with the Galactic Bulge Survey
The primary science driver of the Roman Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey (GBTDS) is the detection and demographics of cold exoplanets via microlensing (Astro2010, Penny et al. 2019).
Posted inAstronomy & Telescopes, Brown Dwarfs, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Interstellar, Status Report
A Free-floating-Planet Microlensing Event Caused By A Saturn-mass Object
A population of free-floating planets is known from gravitational microlensing surveys. None have a directly measured mass, owing to a degeneracy with the distance, but the population statistics indicate that […]
Posted inAstronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report, Stellar Cartography
Predictions Of The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Galactic Exoplanet Survey. V. Detection Rates of Multiplanetary Systems In High Magnification Microlensing Events
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will expand the reach of gravitational microlensing surveys by increasing the number of events monitored and the precision of their light curves.
Posted inAstronomy & Telescopes, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Intelligence & Language, Press Release, SETI & Technosignatures
Microlensing Signatures Of Dyson Sphere-like Structures Around Primordial Black Holes As Technosignatures Of Extraterrestrial Advanced Civilizations
We investigate the microlensing detectability of extraterrestrial technosignatures originating from Dyson sphere – like structures, such as Dyson Swarms surrounding primordial black holes (PBHs).
Posted inAstronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report
Predictions of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Galactic Exoplanet Survey. IV. Lens Mass and Distance Measurements
As part of the Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey (GBTDS), the Nancy Grace Roman Galactic Exoplanet Survey (RGES) will use microlensing to discover cold outer planets and free-floating planets unbound […]
![Color-magnitude diagram of the three events. The CMDs (black dots) of KMT-2022-BLG-0954 and MOA-2024-BLG-018 are constructed from the OGLE-III star catalog (Szymański et al. 2011) within a 2.5' radius centered on the event position, while the CMD of KMT-2024-BLG-0697 is built from KMTC field stars within a 2' × 2'′ square centered on the event position. The red asterisk marks the centroid of the red clump (RC), and the blue dot indicates the source position for the best-fit 2L1S solution. The green points represent the HST CMD from Holtzman et al. (1998), whose red clump centroid, (𝑉 − 𝐼, 𝐼)RC,𝐻𝑆𝑇 = (1.62, 15.15) (Bennett et al. 2008), has been matched to that of KMTC or OGLE-III. For KMT-2022-BLG-0954, the gold and magenta dots represent the primary and secondary sources of the 1L2S model, respectively. The blue line indicates the blue boundary of the bulge main-sequence stars, derived from stellar isochrones with [M/H] = −1.0 and age > 9 Gyr. -- astro-ph.EP](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/A-Comprehensive-Analysis-of-Three.png?resize=1200%2C718&ssl=1)
Posted inAstronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Interstellar, Status Report
A Comprehensive Analysis of Three Microlensing Planet Candidates with the Planet/Binary Degeneracy
We present observations and analyses of three high-magnification microlensing events: KMT-2022-BLG-0954, KMT-2024-BLG-0697, and MOA-2024-BLG-018.
Posted inAstronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gas Giants, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report
Predictions of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Galactic Exoplanet Survey. III. Detectability of Giant Exomoons of Wide Separation Giant Planets
Roman should be sensitive to lenses with mass down to ~ 0.02 M⊕, or roughly the mass of Ganymede. Thus the detection of moons with masses similar to the giant […]