Bennett et al.

Using gravitational microlensing, we detected a cold terrestrial planet orbiting one member of a binary star system. The planet has low mass (twice Earth's) and lies projected at ~0.8 astronomical units (AU) from its host star, about the distance between Earth and the Sun. However, the planet's temperature is much lower, <60 Kelvin, because the host star is only 0.10 to 0.15 solar masses and therefore more than 400 times less luminous than the Sun. The host itself orbits a slightly more massive companion with projected separation of 10 to 15 AU. This detection is consistent with such systems being very common. Straightforward modification of current microlensing search strategies could increase sensitivity to planets in binary systems. With more detections, such binary-star planetary systems could constrain models of planet formation and evolution.

We present an analysis of the gravitational microlensing event OGLE-2013-BLG-0102. The light curve of the event is characterized by a strong short-term anomaly superposed on a smoothly varying lensing curve with a moderate magnification A max ∼ 1.5. It is found that the event was produced by a binary lens with a mass ratio between the components of q = 0.13 and the anomaly was caused by the passage of the source trajectory over a caustic located away from the barycenter of the binary. Based on the analysis of the effects on the light curve due to the finite size of the source and the parallactic motion of the Earth, we determine the physical parameters of the lens system. The measured masses of the lens components are M 1 = 0.096 ± 0.013 M and M 2 = 0.012 ± 0.002 M , which correspond to near the hydrogen-burning and deuterium-burning mass limits, respectively. The distance to the lens is 3.04 ± 0.31 kpc and the projected separation between the lens components is 0.80 ± 0.08 AU.

We report the discovery of MOA-2013-BLG-220Lb, which has a super-Jupiter mass ratio q = 3.01 ± 0.02 × 10 −3 relative to its host. The proper motion, µ = 12.5 ± 1 masyr −1 , is one of the highest for microlensing planets yet discovered, implying that it will be possible to separately resolve the host within ∼ 7 years. Two separate lines of evidence imply that the planet and host are in the Galactic disk. The planet could have been detected and characterized purely with follow-up data, which has important implications for microlensing surveys, both current and into the LSST era.

We present a detailed analysis of survey and follow-up observations of microlensing event OGLE-2012-BLG-0406 based on data obtained from 10 different observatories. Intensive coverage of the light curve, especially the perturbation part, allowed us to accurately measure the parallax effect and lens orbital motion. Combining our measurement of the lens parallax with the angular Einstein radius determined from finite-source effects, we estimate the physical parameters of the lens system. We find that the event was caused by a 2.73 ± 0.43 M J planet orbiting a 0.44 ± 0.07 M early M-type star. The distance to the lens is 4.97 ± 0.29 kpc and the projected separation between the host star and its planet at the time of the event is 3.45 ± 0.26 AU. We find that the additional coverage provided by follow-up observations, especially during the planetary perturbation, leads to a more accurate determination of the physical parameters of the lens.