Searching for Anomalies in the ZTF Catalog of Periodic Variable Stars
| Autor: | Ho-Sang Chan, V. Ashley Villar, Siu-Hei Cheung, Shirley Ho, Anna J. G. O’Grady, Maria R. Drout, Mathieu Renzo |
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| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
FOS: Physical sciences
Astronomy and Astrophysics Astrophysics::Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph) Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics Space and Planetary Science Physics - Data Analysis Statistics and Probability Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) Astrophysics::Solar and Stellar Astrophysics Astrophysics::Earth and Planetary Astrophysics Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics Physics - Computational Physics Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) Astrophysics::Galaxy Astrophysics Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR) Data Analysis Statistics and Probability (physics.data-an) |
| DOI: | 10.48550/arxiv.2112.03306 |
| Popis: | Periodic variables illuminate the physical processes of stars throughout their lifetime. Wide-field surveys continue to increase our discovery rates of periodic variable stars. Automated approaches are essential to identify interesting periodic variable stars for multi-wavelength and spectroscopic follow-up. Here, we present a novel unsupervised machine learning approach to hunt for anomalous periodic variables using phase-folded light curves presented in the Zwicky Transient Facility Catalogue of Periodic Variable Stars by \citet{Chen_2020}. We use a convolutional variational autoencoder to learn a low dimensional latent representation, and we search for anomalies within this latent dimension via an isolation forest. We identify anomalies with irregular variability. Most of the top anomalies are likely highly variable Red Giants or Asymptotic Giant Branch stars concentrated in the Milky Way galactic disk; a fraction of the identified anomalies are more consistent with Young Stellar Objects. Detailed spectroscopic follow-up observations are encouraged to reveal the nature of these anomalies. Comment: 26 pages, 17 figures. The full version of Table 4 and Table 5 are available upon request |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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