MACHO Project

The MACHO Project was a mid-1990s survey to identify MACHOs, i.e., dark matter in the form of brown dwarfs or field planets, by searching for gravitational microlensing events. The project used a 1.27-meter telescope at Mount Stromlo Observatory, Australia to view the Magellanic Clouds, targeting dark matter in front of the two, a region which would constitute part of the Milky Way's galactic halo. The project was begun in 1992 and found some microlensing candidates and also recorded other interesting transients such as novae, and variable star events. Similar projects have been EROS and OGLE.