Candidate microlensing events from M31 observations with the Loiano
  telescope
  Microlensing observations towards M31 are a powerful tool for the study of
the dark matter population in the form of MACHOs both in the Galaxy and the M31
halos, a still unresolved issue, as well as for the analysis of the
characteristics of the M31 luminous populations. In this work we present the
second year results of our pixel lensing campaign carried out towards M31 using
the 152 cm Cassini telescope in Loiano. We have established an automatic
pipeline for the detection and the characterisation of microlensing variations.
We have carried out a complete simulation of the experiment and evaluated the
expected signal, including an analysis of the efficiency of our pipeline. As a
result, we select 1-2 candidate microlensing events (according to different
selection criteria). This output is in agreement with the expected rate of M31
self-lensing events. However, the statistics are still too low to draw
definitive conclusions on MACHO lensing.
