We obtain high-precision limb-darkening measurements in five bands (V , V E , I E , I, and H) for the K3 III (T eff = 4200 K, [Fe/H]= +0.3, log g = 2.3) source of the Galactic bulge microlensing event EROS BLG-2000-5. These measurements are inconsistent with the predictions of atmospheric models at > 10 σ. While the disagreement is present in all bands, it is most apparent in I, I E and V E , in part because the data are better and in part because the intrinsic disagreement is stronger. We find that when limb-darkening profiles are normalized to have unit total flux, the I-band models for a broad range of temperatures all cross each other at a common point. The solar profile also passes through this point. However, the profile as measured by microlensing does not. We conjecture that the models have incorporated some aspect of solar physics that is not shared by giant atmospheres.

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We present photometric and spectroscopic data for the second microlensing event seen toward the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), MACHO-98-SMC-1. The lens is a binary. We resolve the caustic crossing and find that the source took 2∆t = 8.5 hours to transit the caustic. We measure the source temperature T eff = 8000 K both spectroscopically and from the color (V − I) 0 ∼ 0.22. We find two acceptable binary-lens models. In the first, the source crosses the caustic at φ = 43 • .2 and the unmagnified source magnitude is I s = 22.15. The angle implies that the lens crosses the source radius in time t * = ∆t sin φ = 2.92 hours. The magnitude (together with the temperature) implies that

Abstract. We discuss high-resolution, time-resolved spectra of the caustic exit of the binary microlensing event OGLE 2002-BLG-069 obtained with UVES on the VLT. The source star is a G5III giant in the Galactic Bulge. During such events, the source star is highly magnified, and a strong differential magnification around the caustic resolves its surface. Using an appropriate model stellar atmosphere generated by the PHOENIX v2.6 code we obtain a model light curve for the caustic exit and compare it with a dense set of photometric observations obtained by the PLANET microlensing follow up network. We further compare predicted variations in the Hα equivalent width with those measured from our spectra. While the model and observations agree in the gross features, there are discrepancies suggesting shortcomings in the model, particularly for the Hα line core, where we have detected amplified emission from the stellar chromosphere after the source star's trailing limb exited the caustic. This achievement became possible by the provision of the very efficient OGLE-III Early Warning System, a network of small telescopes capable of nearly-continuous round-the-clock photometric monitoring, on-line data reduction, daily near-real-time modelling in order to predict caustic crossing parameters, and a fast and efficient response of a 8 m class telescope to a "Target-of-Opportunity" observation request.

We analyze PLANET and MACHO observations of MACHO 99-BLG-47, the first nearly-normal microlensing event for which high signal-to-noise-ratio data reveal a well-covered, short-duration anomaly. This anomaly occurs near the peak of the event. Short-duration anomalies near the peak of otherwise normal events are expected to arise both from extreme-separation (either very close or very wide), roughly equal-mass binary lenses, and from planetary systems. We show that the lens of MACHO 99-BLG-47 is in fact an extreme-separation binary, not a planetary system, thus demonstrating for the first time that these two important classes of events can be distinguished in practice. However, we find that the wide-binary and close-binary lens solutions fit the data equally well, and cannot be distinguished even at ∆χ 2 = 1. This degeneracy is qualitatively much more severe than the one identified for MACHO 98-SMC-1 because the present degeneracy spans two rather than one dimension in the magnification field and does not require significantly different blending fractions. In the appendix, we explore this result, and show that it is related to the symmetry in the lens equation.