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 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.
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.