We carry out a new analysis of the sample of MACHO microlensing candidates towards the LMC. Our main purpose is to determine the lens population to which the events may belong. We give particular emphasis to the possibility of characterising the Milky Way dark matter halo population with respect to the LMC one. Indeed, we show that only a fraction of the events have characteristics that match t...

In the framework of microlensing searches towards the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), we discuss the results presented by the OGLE collaboration for their OGLE-II campaign (Wyrzykowski et al. 2009). We evaluate the optical depth, the duration and the expected rate of events for the different possible lens populations: both luminous, dominated by the LMC self lensing, and “dark”, the would be comp...

We report the discovery of two new R Coronae Borealis (RCB) stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) using the MACHO project photometry database. The identification of both stars has been confirmed spectroscopically. One is a cool RCB star (T ef f ∼ 5000 K) characterized by very strong Swan bands of C 2 and violet bands of CN, and weak or absent Balmer lines, G-band and 12 C 13 C bands. The se...

In the developing nervous system, ordered neuronal activity patterns can occur even in the absence of sensory input and to investigate how these arise, we have used the model system of the embryonic chicken spinal motor circuit, focusing on motor neurons of the lateral motor column (LMC). At the earliest stages of their molecular differentiation, we can detect differences between medial and lat...

It has recently been suggested that the stars in a vertical extension of the red clump feature seen in LMC color-magnitude diagrams could belong to a tidal stream of material located in front of that galaxy. If this claim is correct, this foreground concentration of stars could contribute significantly to the rate of gravitational microlensing events observed in the LMC microlensing experiments...

We propose an observational test that can break the degeneracy of two main classes of microlensing models to the Magellanic Clouds: (a) the lenses are located in the Galactic halo, and (b) the lenses are located in the LMC disk. The source stars in the latter (self-lensing) models tend to be at the far side or behind the LMC disk, thus experience more reddening and extinction by dust in the LMC...

The MACHO Project's time-sampled photometric database contains thousands of LMC variable star lightcurves. We briefly review the Cepheid catalog. A third sequence is identified in the period–luminosity diagram, lying parallel to and fainter than the 1H and F mode sequences. These are excellent candidates to be Cepheids crossing the instability strip for the first time. However, we find no evide...

In the first paper of this series we presented EBAS, a new fully automated algorithm to analyse the lightcurves of eclipsing binaries, based on the EBOP code. Here we apply the new algorithm to the whole sample of 2580 binaries found in the OGLE LMC photometric survey and derive the orbital elements for 1931 systems. To obtain the statistical properties of the short-period binaries of the LMC w...

The Hipparcos I-band calibration of horizontal-branch red clump giants as standard candles has lead to controversial results for the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). In an attempt to properly ascertain the corrections for interstellar extinction and clump age and metallicity, we analyze new multiwavelength luminosity functions of the LMC red clump. Our photometry dataset in the K-b...

Context. A systematic estimation of the line of sight depth in the disk and bar regions of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC) using red clump stars is presented. Aims. We used the red clump stars from the photometric data of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE II) survey and the Magellanic Cloud Photometric Survey (MCPS) for both the Clouds to estimate the depth....