16,802 research outputs found
Data Driven Discovery in Astrophysics
We review some aspects of the current state of data-intensive astronomy, its
methods, and some outstanding data analysis challenges. Astronomy is at the
forefront of "big data" science, with exponentially growing data volumes and
data rates, and an ever-increasing complexity, now entering the Petascale
regime. Telescopes and observatories from both ground and space, covering a
full range of wavelengths, feed the data via processing pipelines into
dedicated archives, where they can be accessed for scientific analysis. Most of
the large archives are connected through the Virtual Observatory framework,
that provides interoperability standards and services, and effectively
constitutes a global data grid of astronomy. Making discoveries in this
overabundance of data requires applications of novel, machine learning tools.
We describe some of the recent examples of such applications.Comment: Keynote talk in the proceedings of ESA-ESRIN Conference: Big Data
from Space 2014, Frascati, Italy, November 12-14, 2014, 8 pages, 2 figure
Neural Nets and Star/Galaxy Separation in Wide Field Astronomical Images
One of the most relevant problems in the extraction of scientifically useful
information from wide field astronomical images (both photographic plates and
CCD frames) is the recognition of the objects against a noisy background and
their classification in unresolved (star-like) and resolved (galaxies) sources.
In this paper we present a neural network based method capable to perform both
tasks and discuss in detail the performance of object detection in a
representative celestial field. The performance of our method is compared to
that of other methodologies often used within the astronomical community.Comment: 6 pages, to appear in the proceedings of IJCNN 99, IEEE Press, 199
Star Formation Rates for photometric samples of galaxies using machine learning methods
Star Formation Rates or SFRs are crucial to constrain theories of galaxy
formation and evolution. SFRs are usually estimated via spectroscopic
observations requiring large amounts of telescope time. We explore an
alternative approach based on the photometric estimation of global SFRs for
large samples of galaxies, by using methods such as automatic parameter space
optimisation, and supervised Machine Learning models. We demonstrate that, with
such approach, accurate multi-band photometry allows to estimate reliable SFRs.
We also investigate how the use of photometric rather than spectroscopic
redshifts, affects the accuracy of derived global SFRs. Finally, we provide a
publicly available catalogue of SFRs for more than 27 million galaxies
extracted from the Sloan Digital Sky survey Data Release 7. The catalogue is
available through the Vizier facility at the following link
ftp://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/pub/cats/J/MNRAS/486/1377
Photometric redshifts for Quasars in multi band Surveys
MLPQNA stands for Multi Layer Perceptron with Quasi Newton Algorithm and it
is a machine learning method which can be used to cope with regression and
classification problems on complex and massive data sets. In this paper we give
the formal description of the method and present the results of its application
to the evaluation of photometric redshifts for quasars. The data set used for
the experiment was obtained by merging four different surveys (SDSS, GALEX,
UKIDSS and WISE), thus covering a wide range of wavelengths from the UV to the
mid-infrared. The method is able i) to achieve a very high accuracy; ii) to
drastically reduce the number of outliers and catastrophic objects; iii) to
discriminate among parameters (or features) on the basis of their significance,
so that the number of features used for training and analysis can be optimized
in order to reduce both the computational demands and the effects of
degeneracy. The best experiment, which makes use of a selected combination of
parameters drawn from the four surveys, leads, in terms of DeltaZnorm (i.e.
(zspec-zphot)/(1+zspec)), to an average of DeltaZnorm = 0.004, a standard
deviation sigma = 0.069 and a Median Absolute Deviation MAD = 0.02 over the
whole redshift range (i.e. zspec <= 3.6), defined by the 4-survey cross-matched
spectroscopic sample. The fraction of catastrophic outliers, i.e. of objects
with photo-z deviating more than 2sigma from the spectroscopic value is < 3%,
leading to a sigma = 0.035 after their removal, over the same redshift range.
The method is made available to the community through the DAMEWARE web
application.Comment: 38 pages, Submitted to ApJ in February 2013; Accepted by ApJ in May
201
The Luminosity Function of 81 Abell Clusters from the CRoNaRio catalogues
We present the composite luminosity function (hereafter LF) of galaxies for
81 Abell clusters studied in our survey of the Northern Hemisphere, using DPOSS
data processed by the CRoNaRio collaboration. The derived LF is very accurate
due to the use of homogeneous data both for the clusters and the control fields
and to the local estimate of the background, which takes into account the
presence of large-scale structures and of foreground clusters and groups. The
global composite LF is quite flat down to has a slope
with minor variations from blue to red filters, and
mag ( km s Mpc) in the
and filters, respectively (errors are detailed in the text). We find a
significant difference between rich and poor clusters thus arguing in favour of
a dependence of the LF on the properties of the environment.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures. Contribution to the IAP 2000 Conference
"Constructing the Universe with Clusters of Galaxies", Paris, July 200
Astrophysics in S.Co.P.E
S.Co.P.E. is one of the four projects funded by the Italian Government in
order to provide Southern Italy with a distributed computing infrastructure for
fundamental science. Beside being aimed at building the infrastructure,
S.Co.P.E. is also actively pursuing research in several areas among which
astrophysics and observational cosmology. We shortly summarize the most
significant results obtained in the first two years of the project and related
to the development of middleware and Data Mining tools for the Virtual
Observatory
- …