MACHO project

MACHO project

A collaboration between universities in Australia and the USA to test the hypothesis that a major fraction of the dark matter in the halo of our Galaxy is made up of MACHOs, by searching for gravitational microlensing events toward the LMC and the Galactic bulge. See gravitational lens.
References in periodicals archive ?
The MACHO project is the result of a collaboration between astronomers at the Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories, the Center for Particle Astrophysics at the University of California (Santa Barbara, San Diego, and Berkeley campuses) and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
The universe through gravity's lens
The number was startling - the MACHO project alone has bagged 1,500 Cepheid variables in the central region of the LMC where only 300 were known to exist before.
Bonuses of the microlensing business
Known as the MACHO project (for massive compact halo objects, as distinct from weakly interacting massive particles -- WIMPs -- and other subatomic dark-matter candidates), it uses a specially built camera containing eight 2,048-by-2,048-pixel CCDs at the prime focus of the newly refurbished 1.3-meter telescope at the Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories.
Searching for dark matter
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