QUANTIFYING QUASAR VARIABILITY AS PART OF A GENERAL APPROACH TO CLASSIFYING CONTINUOUSLY VARYING SOURCES
- Department of Astronomy, Ohio State University, 140 West 18th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210 (United States)
- Warsaw University Observatory, Al. Ujazdowskie 4, 00-478 Warsaw (Poland)
Robust fast methods to classify variable light curves in large sky surveys are becoming increasingly important. While it is relatively straightforward to identify common periodic stars and particular transient events (supernovae, novae, microlensing events), there is no equivalent for non-periodic continuously varying sources (quasars, aperiodic stellar variability). In this paper, we present a fast method for modeling and classifying such sources. We demonstrate the method using approx86, 000 variable sources from the OGLE-II survey of the LMC and approx2700 mid-IR-selected quasar candidates from the OGLE-III survey of the LMC and SMC. We discuss the location of common variability classes in the parameter space of the model. In particular, we show that quasars occupy a distinct region of variability space, providing a simple quantitative approach to the variability selection of quasars.
- OSTI ID:
- 21392432
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 708, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/708/2/927; ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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