Results from the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE)

The analysis of the first three years of the OGLE data revealed 12 microlensing events of the Galactic bulge stars, with the characteristic time scales in the range $ 8.6 < t_0 < 80 $ days, where $ t_0 = R_E / V $. A complete sample of nine events gave the optical depth to gravitational microlensing larger than $(3.3 \pm 1.2) \times 10^{-6}$, in excess of current theoretical estimates, indicating a much higher efficiency for microlensing by either bulge or disk lenses. The lenses are likely to be ordinary stars in the Galactic bar, which has its long axis elongated towards us. At this time we have no evidence that the OGLE events are related to dark matter. The OGLE color magnitude diagrams reveal the presence of the Galactic bar and a low density inner disk region $ \sim 4 $ kpc in radius. A catalogue of a few thousand variable stars is in preparation.
10 pages, 5 figures, invited talk presented at the IAU Symposium 169 ``Unsolved Problems of the Milky Way'', uses Kluwer LaTeX style macro, PostScript version with figures available through anonymous ftp from astro.princeton.edu, directory stanek/Hague, through WWW, http://astro.princeton.edu/~library/prep.html, or on request. Princeton Observatory Preprint (electronic) POPe-598