CAN MACHOS PROBE THE SHAPE OF THE GALAXY HALO

Microlensing searches in our galaxy have recently discovered several c andidates in the direction of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). We stu dy the prospects for such searches to yield useful information about t he flattening of the Galaxy dark matter halo, using a self-consistent oblate halo model and allowing for the possibility of misalignment bet ween the disk and halo symmetry axes. The microlensing optical depth f or the LMC, tau(LMC), depends sensitively on the disk-halo tilt angle in the Milky Way, as does the ratio tau(SMC)/tau(LMC). If the tilt ang le is as large as 30-degrees, a much larger spread in values for tau(L MC) is consistent with rotation curve constraints than previously thou ght. Disk-halo tilt and halo flattening do not significantly affect th e MACHO masses inferred from event durations.