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）资助的。迪·斯蒂法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的局部邻域，也就是1000秒差距以内的区域。他们将开发方法来识别当地的中子星，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伴星的比例。这些研究将允许正在进行的和新的项目，包括计划中的大型综合巡天望远镜，发现和研究数百颗中子星。这项工作和类似的工作可能会导致几十个局部黑洞以及低质量矮星的发现。通过引力透镜对矮星周围行星的研究可能会对我们理解宇宙中无处不在的生命产生影响。该计划的更广泛影响包括具有广泛应用的自动检测和变异性分类方法，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.