Mesolensing: Employing the Power of Lensing in the Solar Neighborhood

该奖项是根据2009年《美国复苏和再投资法案》(公法111-5)提供资金的。迪·斯特凡诺博士和她的合作研究人员将使用引力透镜来探索银河系附近的区域，这个区域不到1千帕秒。他们将开发方法来识别局部中子星，测量它们的质量和横向速度，并确定它们与包括行星在内的同伴的比例。这些研究将允许正在进行的和新的项目，包括计划中的大型天气观测望远镜，发现和研究数百颗中子星。这项工作和平行的工作可能会导致发现数十个局部黑洞，以及低质量矮星。通过引力透镜研究矮星周围的行星可能会对我们理解宇宙中生命的普遍存在产生影响。该计划的更广泛影响包括自动检测和分类变率的方法，这一方法具有广泛的应用，以及对研究生和本科生的培训。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). Dr. Di Stefano and her co-investigators will use gravitational lensing to explore the local neighborhood of the Galaxy, the region within 1 kiloparsec. They will develop methods to identify local neutron stars, to measure their masses and transverse velocities, and to determine the fraction of them with companions, including planets. These studies will allow ongoing and new programs, including the planned Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, to discover and study hundreds of neutron stars. This work and parallel work may lead to the discovery of dozens of local black holes, as well as low-mass dwarf stars. Studies of planets around dwarf stars via gravitational lensing may have implications for our understanding of the ubiquity of life throughout the Universe.The Broader Impacts of this program include methods for automated detection and classification of variability, which has broad application, and training of graduate and undergraduate students.