Towards Locating the Brightest Microlensing Events on the Sky
  It is estimated that a star brighter than visual magnitude 17 is undergoing a detectable gravitational microlensing event, somewhere on the sky, at any given time. It is assumed that both lenses and sources are normal stars drawn from a standard Bahcall-Soneira model of our Galaxy. Furthermore, over the time scale of a year, a star 15th magnitude or brighter should undergo a detectable gravitational lens amplification. Detecting and studying the microlensing event rate among the brightest 10$^8$ stars could yield a better understanding of Galactic stellar and dark matter distributions. Diligent tracking of bright microlensing events with even small telescopes might detect planets orbiting these stellar lenses. 
Robert J. Nemiroff (Michigan Tech)