Speaker
Keming Zhang
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Description
Free-floating planet (FFP) candidates detected via microlensing could also be bound planets on wide orbits (>5–10 au). High resolution imaging may break this degeneracy via direct detection of the putative host stars. We are conducting a multi-year Keck AO imaging survey of a large number of microlensing FFP candidates detected over the past two decades. I present preliminary results on phase 1 of our survey consisting of six events. Notably, we report on the detection of candidate hosts for the terrestrial FFP candidate MOA-9y-5919L at projected separations of ~1000 au. By comparison, no candidate hosts were detected within ~100 au for all six events.
Primary author
Keming Zhang
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
