Towards the automatic estimation of gravitational lenses' time delays

Abstract

Estimation of time delays from a noisy and gapped data is one of the simplest data analysis problems in astronomy by its formulation. But as history of real experiments show, the work with observed data sets can be quite complex and evolved. By analysing in detail previous attempts to build delay estimation algorithms we try to develop an automatic and robust procedure to perform the task. To evaluate and compare different variants of the algorithms we use real observed data sets which have been objects of past controversies. In this way we hope to select the methods and procedures which have highest probability to succeed in complex situations. As a result of our investigations we propose an estimation procedure which can be used as a method of choice in large photometric experiments. We can not claim that proposed methodology works with any reasonably well sampled input data set. But we hope that the steps taken are in correct direction and developed software is truly useful for practising astronomers.Comment: Accepted by Baltic Astronomy, 21 pages, 4 figure