The Massive Compact Halo Object (MACHO) Project Photometry Catalog

The MACHO Project was a collaboration between scientists at the Mt. Stromlo & Siding Spring Observatories, the Center for Particle Astrophysics at the Santa Barbara, San Diego, & Berkeley campuses of the University of California, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Our primary aim was to test the hypothesis that a significant fraction of the dark matter in the halo of the Milky Way is made up of objects like brown dwarfs or planets: these objects have come to be known as MACHOs, for MAssive Compact Halo Objects. The signature of these objects is the occasional amplification of the light from extragalactic stars by the gravitational lens effect. The amplification can be large, but events are extremely rare: it was necessary to monitor photometrically several million stars for a period of 10 years in order to obtain a useful detection rate. For this purpose we built a two channel system that employed eight 2048*2048 CCDs, mounted on the 50 inch telescope at Mt. Stromlo. We have taken ~127,000 images with this system since June 1992. Analysis of a subset of these data has yielded databases containing light curves in two colors for 8 million stars in the LMC and 10 million in the bulge of the Milky Way.
Type
Collection
Title
The Massive Compact Halo Object (MACHO) Project Photometry Catalog
Collection Type
Catalogue or Index
Access Privileges
Macho Group
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
10.4225/13/5139255AB2996
Website Address
http://nvo.stsci.edu/vor10/getRecord.aspx?id=ivo://anusf.anu.au/macho/photometry/ConeSearch
Brief Description
This collection is the data used by the Cone Search Protocol.
Full Description
The MACHO Project was a collaboration between scientists at the Mt. Stromlo & Siding Spring Observatories, the Center for Particle Astrophysics at the Santa Barbara, San Diego, & Berkeley campuses of the University of California, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Our primary aim was to test the hypothesis that a significant fraction of the dark matter in the halo of the Milky Way is made up of objects like brown dwarfs or planets: these objects have come to be known as MACHOs, for MAssive Compact Halo Objects. The signature of these objects is the occasional amplification of the light from extragalactic stars by the gravitational lens effect. The amplification can be large, but events are extremely rare: it was necessary to monitor photometrically several million stars for a period of 10 years in order to obtain a useful detection rate. For this purpose we built a two channel system that employed eight 2048*2048 CCDs, mounted on the 50 inch telescope at Mt. Stromlo. We have taken ~127,000 images with this system since June 1992. Analysis of a subset of these data has yielded databases containing light curves in two colors for 8 million stars in the LMC and 10 million in the bulge of the Milky Way.
Contact Email
Jon.Smillie@anu.edu.au
Fields of Research
020106 - High Energy Astrophysics; Cosmic Rays
Keywords
Dark Matter; Optical Astronomy; Light Curves
Date Coverage
2003
1992
Year of data publication
2013
Creator(s) for Citation
Alcock
C.
Allsman
R.A.
Alves
D.R.
Axelrod
T.S.
Becker
A.C.
Bennett
D.P.
Chan
S.
Cook
K.H.
Drake
A.
Freeman
K.C.
Griest
K.
Lehner
M.J.
Marshall
S.L.
Minniti
D.
Peterson
B.A.
Pratt
M.R.
Quinn
P.J.
Rodgers
A.W.
Rorabeck
A.
Sabine
S.
Smillie
J.
Stubbs
C.W.
Sutherland
W.
Tomaney
A.
Turner
E.
Vandehei
T.
Welch
D.L.
Publisher for Citation
The Australian National University Supercomputer Facilty
Access Rights
The data for this collection can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection.
Rights held in and over the data
The copyright to this collection is held under an Open Access license.

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Identifier: anudc:3255

Status: Published
Published to:
  • Australian National University
  • Australian National Data Service
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