Finding the Brightest Galactic Bulge Microlensing Events with a Small
  Aperture Telescope and Image Subtraction
  Following the suggestion of Gould and Depoy (1998) we investigate the
feasibility of studying the brightest microlensing events towards the Galactic
bulge using a small aperture (~10 cm) telescope. We used one of the HAT
telescopes to obtain 151 exposures spanning 88 nights in 2005 of an 8.4x8.4
square degree FOV centered on (l,b) = (2.85, -5.00). We reduced the data using
image subtraction software. We find that such a search method can effectively
contribute to monitoring bright microlensing events, as was advocated.
Comparing this search method to the existing ones we find a dedicated bulge
photometric survey of this nature would fulfill a significant niche at
excellent performance and rather low cost. We obtain matches to 7 microlensing
events listed in the 2005 OGLE archives. We find several other light curves
whose fits closely resemble microlensing events. Unsurprisingly, many periodic
variables and miscellaneous variables are also detected in our data, and we
estimate approximately 50% of these are new discoveries. We conclude by briefly
proposing Small Aperture Microlensing Survey, which would monitor the Galactic
bulge around the clock to provide dense coverage of the highest magnification
microlensing events.
