K. B. Johnston

Generation of a supervised classification algorithm for time-series variable stars with an application to the LINEAR dataset

Abstract With the advent of digital astronomy, new benefits and new problems have been presented to the modern day astronomer. While data can be captured in a more efficient and accurate manner using digital means, the efficiency of data retrieval has led to an overload of scientific data for processing and storage. This paper will focus on the construction and application of a supervised pattern classification algorithm for the identification of variable stars. Given the reduction of a survey of stars into a standard feature space, the problem of using prior patterns to identify new observed patterns can be reduced to time-tested classification methodologies and algorithms. Such supervised methods, so called because the user trains the algorithms prior to application using patterns with known classes or labels, provide a means to probabilistically determine the estimated class type of new observations. This paper will demonstrate the construction and application of a supervised classification algorithm on variable star data. The classifier is applied to a set of 192,744 LINEAR data points. Of the original samples, 34,451 unique stars were classified with high confidence (high level of probability of being the true class).

Variable Star Signature Classification using Slotted Symbolic Markov Modeling

Abstract With the advent of digital astronomy, new benefits and new challenges have been presented to the modern day astronomer. No longer can the astronomer rely on manual processing, instead the profession as a whole has begun to adopt more advanced computational means. This paper focuses on the construction and application of a novel time-domain signature extraction methodology and the development of a supporting supervised pattern classification algorithm for the identification of variable stars. A methodology for the reduction of stellar variable observations (time-domain data) into a novel feature space representation is introduced. The methodology presented will be referred to as Slotted Symbolic Markov Modeling (SSMM) and has a number of advantages which will be demonstrated to be beneficial; specifically to the supervised classification of stellar variables. It will be shown that the methodology outperformed a baseline standard methodology on a standardized set of stellar light curve data. The performance on a set of data derived from the LINEAR dataset will also be shown.

A Search for Variability in Cool White Dwarf Stars

Preliminary results of a photometric survey of cool white dwarf stars are presented. CCD-based time series observations have been obtained for white dwarfs (WDs) with absolute magnitude M v > +15 and color 0.5 +17) OIR flux standards for large aperture telescopes.