Published November 2020
| Published + Accepted Version
Journal Article
Open
Unsupervised machine learning for transient discovery in deeper, wider, faster light curves
Abstract
Identification of anomalous light curves within time-domain surveys is often challenging. In addition, with the growing number of wide-field surveys and the volume of data produced exceeding astronomers' ability for manual evaluation, outlier and anomaly detection is becoming vital for transient science. We present an unsupervised method for transient discovery using a clustering technique and the ASTRONOMALY package. As proof of concept, we evaluate 85 553 min-cadenced light curves collected over two ∼1.5 h periods as part of the Deeper, Wider, Faster program, using two different telescope dithering strategies. By combining the clustering technique HDBSCAN with the isolation forest anomaly detection algorithm via the visual interface of ASTRONOMALY, we are able to rapidly isolate anomalous sources for further analysis. We successfully recover the known variable sources, across a range of catalogues from within the fields, and find a further seven uncatalogued variables and two stellar flare events, including a rarely observed ultrafast flare (∼5 min) from a likely M-dwarf.
Additional Information
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model). Accepted 2020 August 7. Received 2020 July 15; in original form 2020 May 25. Published: 09 September 2020. We would like to thank the organisers of the 2019 Kavli Summer Program in Astrophysics hosted at the University of California, Santa Cruz, without which this collaboration and work would not have been possible. We give thanks to our reviewer for their feedback, insight and comments. The program was funded by the Kavli Foundation, The National Science Foundation, UC Santa Cruz, and the Simons Foundation. Part of this research was funded by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav), CE170100004. We acknowledge the financial assistance of the National Research Foundation (NRF). Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at, are those of the authors and are not necessarily to be attributed to the NRF. This work was partly supported by the GROWTH (Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen) project funded by the National Science Foundation under PIRE Grant No 1545949. This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia (https://www.cosmos.esa. int/gaia), processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC, https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/consortium). Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement. This project used data obtained with the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), which was constructed by the Dark Energy Survey (DES) collaboration. Funding for the DES Projects has been provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Education of Spain, the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, the Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics at the Ohio State University, the Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University, Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos, Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico and the Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovacão, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and the Collaborating Institutions in the Dark Energy Survey. The Collaborating Institutions are Argonne National Laboratory, the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of Cambridge, Centro de Investigaciones Enérgeticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas-Madrid, the University of Chicago, University College London, the DES-Brazil Consortium, the University of Edinburgh, the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Institut de Ciències de l'Espai (IEEC/CSIC), the Institut de Física d'Altes Energies, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München and the associated Excellence Cluster Universe, the University of Michigan, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, the University of Nottingham, the Ohio State University, the OzDES Membership Consortium the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Portsmouth, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, the University of Sussex, and Texas A&M University. Based on observations at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, National Optical Astronomy Observatory which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. Data Availability: The data underlying this article will be shared on reasonable request to the corresponding author.Attached Files
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Accepted Version - 2008.04666.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 107062
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20201214-100248814
- Kavli Foundation
- NSF
- University of California, Santa Cruz
- Simons Foundation
- CE170100004
- Australian Research Council
- National Research Foundation of Korea
- OISE-1545949
- NSF
- Gaia Multilateral Agreement
- Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (MEC)
- Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
- Higher Education Funding Council for England
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- University of Chicago
- Ohio State University
- Texas A&M University
- Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos (FINEP)
- Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ)
- Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)
- Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovacão (MCTI)
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
- Argonne National Laboratory
- University of Cambridge
- Centro de Investigaciones Enérgeticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas
- University College London
- DES-Brazil Consortium
- University of Edinburgh
- ETH Zurich
- Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
- Institut de Ciències de l'Espai (IEEC/CSIC)
- Institut de Física d'Altes Energies
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München
- Excellence Cluster Universe
- University of Michigan
- National Optical Astronomy Observatory
- University of Nottingham
- OzDES Membership Consortium
- University of Pennsylvania
- University of Portsmouth
- Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
- Stanford University
- University of Sussex
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2020-12-14Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field