7,448 research outputs found
Automated Quantitative Description of Spiral Galaxy Arm-Segment Structure
We describe a system for the automatic quantification of structure in spiral
galaxies. This enables translation of sky survey images into data needed to
help address fundamental astrophysical questions such as the origin of spiral
structure---a phenomenon that has eluded theoretical description despite 150
years of study (Sellwood 2010). The difficulty of automated measurement is
underscored by the fact that, to date, only manual efforts (such as the citizen
science project Galaxy Zoo) have been able to extract information about large
samples of spiral galaxies. An automated approach will be needed to eliminate
measurement subjectivity and handle the otherwise-overwhelming image quantities
(up to billions of images) from near-future surveys. Our approach automatically
describes spiral galaxy structure as a set of arcs, precisely describing spiral
arm segment arrangement while retaining the flexibility needed to accommodate
the observed wide variety of spiral galaxy structure. The largest existing
quantitative measurements were manually-guided and encompassed fewer than 100
galaxies, while we have already applied our method to more than 29,000
galaxies. Our output matches previous information, both quantitatively over
small existing samples, and qualitatively against human classifications from
Galaxy Zoo.Comment: 9 pages;4 figures; 2 tables; accepted to CVPR (Computer Vision and
Pattern Recognition), June 2012, Providence, Rhode Island, June 16-21, 201
Wide Binary Effects on Asymmetries in Asymptotic Giant Branch Circumstellar Envelopes
Observations of increasingly higher spatial resolution reveal the existence
of asymmetries in the circumstellar envelopes of a small fraction of asymptotic
giant branch (AGB) stars. Although there is no general consensus for their
origin, a binary companion star may be responsible. Within this framework, we
investigate the gravitational effects associated with a sufficiently wide
binary system, where Roche lobe overflow is unimportant, on the outflowing
envelopes of AGB stars using three dimensional hydrodynamic simulations. The
effects due to individual binary components are separately studied, enabling
investigation of the stellar and circumstellar characteristics in detail. The
reflex motion of the AGB star alters the wind velocity distribution, thereby,
determining the overall shape of the outflowing envelope. On the other hand,
the interaction of the companion with the envelope produces a gravitational
wake, which exhibits a vertically thinner shape. The two patterns overlap and
form clumpy structures. To illustrate the diversity of shapes, we present the
numerical results as a function of inclination angle. Not only is spiral
structure produced by the binary interaction, but arc patterns are also found
that represent the former structure when viewed at different inclinations. The
arcs reveal a systematic shift of their centers of curvature for cases when the
orbital speed of the AGB star is comparable to its wind speed. They take on the
shape of a peanut for inclinations nearly edge-on. In the limit of slow orbital
motion of the AGB star relative to the wind speed, the arc pattern becomes
nearly spherically symmetric. We find that the aspect ratio of the overall
oblate shape of the pattern is an important diagnostic probe of the binary as
it can be used to constrain the orbital velocity of the AGB star, and moreover
the binary mass ratio.Comment: 33 pages, 11 figures, 4 tables, accepted for publication in the
Astrophysical Journa
Automatic Structural Scene Digitalization
In this paper, we present an automatic system for the analysis and labeling
of structural scenes, floor plan drawings in Computer-aided Design (CAD)
format. The proposed system applies a fusion strategy to detect and recognize
various components of CAD floor plans, such as walls, doors, windows and other
ambiguous assets. Technically, a general rule-based filter parsing method is
fist adopted to extract effective information from the original floor plan.
Then, an image-processing based recovery method is employed to correct
information extracted in the first step. Our proposed method is fully automatic
and real-time. Such analysis system provides high accuracy and is also
evaluated on a public website that, on average, archives more than ten
thousands effective uses per day and reaches a relatively high satisfaction
rate.Comment: paper submitted to PloS On
A survey of visual preprocessing and shape representation techniques
Many recent theories and methods proposed for visual preprocessing and shape representation are summarized. The survey brings together research from the fields of biology, psychology, computer science, electrical engineering, and most recently, neural networks. It was motivated by the need to preprocess images for a sparse distributed memory (SDM), but the techniques presented may also prove useful for applying other associative memories to visual pattern recognition. The material of this survey is divided into three sections: an overview of biological visual processing; methods of preprocessing (extracting parts of shape, texture, motion, and depth); and shape representation and recognition (form invariance, primitives and structural descriptions, and theories of attention)
Probing the Universe with Weak Lensing
Gravitational lenses can provide crucial information on the geometry of the
Universe, on the cosmological scenario of formation of its structures as well
as on the history of its components with look-back time. In this review, I
focus on the most recent results obtained during the last five years from the
analysis of the weak lensing regime. The interest of weak lensing as a probe of
dark matter and the for study of the coupling between light and mass on scales
of clusters of galaxies, large scale structures and galaxies is discussed
first. Then I present the impact of weak lensing for the study of distant
galaxies and of the population of lensed sources as function of redshift.
Finally, I discuss the potential interest of weak lensing to constrain the
cosmological parameters, either from pure geometrical effects observed in
peculiar lenses, or from the coupling of weak lensing with the CMB.Comment: To appear Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysiscs Vol. 37. Latex
and psfig.sty. Version without figure, 54 pages, 73Kb. Complete version
including 13 figures (60 pages) available on ftp.iap.fr anonymous account in
/pub/from_users/mellier/AnnualReview ; file ARAAmellier.ps.gz 1.6 M
The PCA Lens-Finder: application to CFHTLS
We present the results of a new search for galaxy-scale strong lensing
systems in CFHTLS Wide. Our lens-finding technique involves a preselection of
potential lens galaxies, applying simple cuts in size and magnitude. We then
perform a Principal Component Analysis of the galaxy images, ensuring a clean
removal of the light profile. Lensed features are searched for in the residual
images using the clustering topometric algorithm DBSCAN. We find 1098 lens
candidates that we inspect visually, leading to a cleaned sample of 109 new
lens candidates. Using realistic image simulations we estimate the completeness
of our sample and show that it is independent of source surface brightness,
Einstein ring size (image separation) or lens redshift. We compare the
properties of our sample to previous lens searches in CFHTLS. Including the
present search, the total number of lenses found in CFHTLS amounts to 678,
which corresponds to ~4 lenses per square degree down to i=24.8. This is
equivalent to ~ 60.000 lenses in total in a survey as wide as Euclid, but at
the CFHTLS resolution and depth.Comment: 21 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication on A&
Saturn as a radio source
Magnetospheric radio emissions, Saturn electrostatic discharges, inferred source locations, and emission theories are addressed
Active shape models with focus on overlapping problems applied to plant detection and soil pore analysis
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