Dark mass moments

A previous author has shown how to detect the 'dark' constituents of the halo of our Galaxy, should their mass lie in the approximate domain 10-6 < M/Msun < 10-1. 'Massive Halo Objects' (MHOs), when crossing close to the line-of-sight of a more distant and 'fixed' star, would gravitationally 'microlense' its image, resulting in a time-dependent achromatic magnification with a predictable shape. Observations now in preparation will monitor ∼106 stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) during ∼ 1 yr. Barring unsuspected backgrounds, these observations will establish or exclude a halo dark mass constituency in the quoted mass range. (Author)