MACHO
The MACHO project was a collaboration to search for MACHOs (objects like brown dwarfs or planets) using a camera with a two channel system that employs eight 2048*2048 CCDson the 1.3-meter (50-inch) telescope of the Mount Stromlo observatory. It was led by Charles Alcock. 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 is necessary to monitor photometrically several million stars for a period of years in order to obtain a useful detection rate. The MACHO team found several dozen microlensing events in the Galactic Bulge and Large Magellanic Cloud. The data taken by the project has been an incredible source for finding variable stars, and for astronomical light curves in general.
Currently we only have MACHO variable stars in our catalog. Overall catalog coming soon! All of the MACHO data is available from the MACHO web site through this form interface.
Last Updated at: 2007-09-29 01:48 PM.