Published April 11, 2016 | Version Submitted + Published
Journal Article Open

An analysis of feature relevance in the classification of astronomical transients with machine learning methods

  • 1. ROR icon University of Naples Federico II
  • 2. ROR icon Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies
  • 3. ROR icon Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte
  • 4. ROR icon California Institute of Technology

Abstract

The exploitation of present and future synoptic (multiband and multi-epoch) surveys requires an extensive use of automatic methods for data processing and data interpretation. In this work, using data extracted from the Catalina Real Time Transient Survey (CRTS), we investigate the classification performance of some well tested methods: Random Forest, MultiLayer Perceptron with Quasi Newton Algorithm and K-Nearest Neighbours, paying special attention to the feature selection phase. In order to do so, several classification experiments were performed. Namely: identification of cataclysmic variables, separation between galactic and extragalactic objects and identification of supernovae.

Additional Information

© 2016 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. Accepted 2016 January 15. Received 2016 January 15. In original form 2015 October 30. First published online February 20, 2016. The authors wish to thank the anonymous referee for the very helpful comments and suggestions which contributed to optimize the manuscript. The authors wish to acknowledge financial support from the Italian Ministry of University and Research through the grant PRIN-MIUR 'Cosmology with Euclid' and from the Keck Institute for Space Studies who sponsored the working group on TDA. MB and SC acknowledge financial contribution from the agreement ASI/INAF I/023/12/1. Authors also wish to thank K. Polsterer for useful discussions. This work made use of the CRTS public archive data, of the CTSCS service and of the DAMEWARE infrastructure. CD and SGD acknowledge a partial support from the NSF grants AST-1413600 and AST-1313422. We are thankful to A. J. Drake, A. A. Mahabal, and M. J. Graham for their key contributions in the CRTS project.

Attached Files

Published - MNRAS-2016-D'Isanto-3119-32.pdf

Published - MNRAS-2016-D=0027Isanto-3119-32.pdf

Submitted - 1601.03931v1.pdf

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1601.03931v1.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
66731
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20160509-092928454

Related works

Funding

Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca (MIUR)
Keck Institute for Space Studies
Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI)
I/023/12/1
NSF
AST-1413600
NSF
AST-1313422
Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF)

Dates

Created
2016-05-09
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Updated
2021-11-11
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Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Keck Institute for Space Studies