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Title: Automated transient identification in the Dark Energy Survey

Journal Article · · The Astronomical Journal (Online)
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  1. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  2. Univ. of Portsmouth, Portsmouth (United Kingdom)
  3. Univ. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (United States)
  4. Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL (United States)
  5. Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
  6. Univ. of Chicago,Chicago, IL (United States)
  7. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  8. Univ. of Southampton, Southampton (United Kingdom)
  9. Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
  10. Univ. College London, London (United Kingdom)
  11. Univ. of Cambridge, Cambridge (United Kingdom)
  12. Univ. Pierre et Marie Curie, and CNRS, Paris (France)
  13. Lab. Interinstitucional de e-Astronomia - LIneA, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil); Observatorio Nacional, Rio de Janieiro (Brazil)
  14. Institut de Ciencies de l'Espai, Barcelona (Spain)
  15. Lab. Interinstitucional de e-Astonomia, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil); Observatorio Nacional, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
  16. National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Urbana, IL (United States)
  17. Texas A & M Univ., College Station, TX (United States)
  18. Ludwig Maximilian Univ., Muenchen (Germany)
  19. Univ. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (United States); California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States)
  20. Lab. Interinstitucional de e-Astronomia LIneA, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
  21. Univ. of Chicago,Chicago, IL (United States); Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
  22. Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)
  23. Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching (Germany); Univ. Observatory Munich, Munich (Germany)
  24. Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL (United States); National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Urbana, IL (United States)
  25. National Optical Astronomy Observatory, La Serena (Chile)
  26. Austrilian Astronomical Observatory, North Ryde (Australia)
  27. Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
  28. The Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH (United States)
  29. Univ. Autonoma de Barcelona, Barcelona (Spain); Institucio Catalana de Recerca i Estudis, Barcelona (Spain)
  30. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States); Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)
  31. Univ. of Sussex, Brighton (United Kingdom)
  32. Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA (United States); SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
  33. Centro de Investigaciones Energeticas, Madrid (Spain)
  34. Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL (United States); Centro de Investigaciones Energeticas, Madrid (Spain)
  35. National Optical Astronomy Observatory, North Ryde (Australia)
  36. Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States); Lab. Interinstitucional de e-Astronomia LIneA, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
+ Show Author Affiliations

We describe an algorithm for identifying point-source transients and moving objects on reference-subtracted optical images containing artifacts of processing and instrumentation. The algorithm makes use of the supervised machine learning technique known as Random Forest. We present results from its use in the Dark Energy Survey Supernova program (DES-SN), where it was trained using a sample of 898,963 signal and background events generated by the transient detection pipeline. After reprocessing the data collected during the first DES-SN observing season (2013 September through 2014 February) using the algorithm, the number of transient candidates eligible for human scanning decreased by a factor of 13.4, while only 1.0% of the artificial Type Ia supernovae (SNe) injected into search images to monitor survey efficiency were lost, most of which were very faint events. Here we characterize the algorithm's performance in detail, and we discuss how it can inform pipeline design decisions for future time-domain imaging surveys, such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and the Zwicky Transient Facility. An implementation of the algorithm and the training data used in this paper are available at http://portal.nserc.gov/project/dessn/autoscan.

Research Organization:
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States); SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC00112704; AC02-76SF00515; AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1234374
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1311819; OSTI ID: 1812341
Report Number(s):
BNL-111654-2015-JA; SLAC-PUB-16709; KA2301020
Journal Information:
The Astronomical Journal (Online), Vol. 150, Issue 3; ISSN 1538-3881
Publisher:
IOP Publishing - AAASCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 105 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (42)

The IPAC Image Subtraction and Discovery Pipeline for the Intermediate Palomar Transient Factory journal December 2016
Automated Transient Detection with Shapelet Analysis in Image-subtracted Data text January 2019
A DECam Search for Explosive Optical Transients Associated with IceCube Neutrinos text January 2019
Automated Transient Detection with Shapelet Analysis in Image-subtracted Data journal October 2019
GROWTH on S190510g: DECam Observation Planning and Follow-up of a Distant Binary Neutron Star Merger Candidate journal August 2019
Cosmological Constraints from Multiple Probes in the Dark Energy Survey text January 2018
A Search for Optical Emission from Binary Black Hole Merger GW170814 with the Dark Energy Camera journal March 2019
First Cosmology Results Using Type Ia Supernovae From the Dark Energy Survey: Photometric Pipeline and Light Curve Data Release text January 2018
A Morphological Classification Model to Identify Unresolved PanSTARRS1 Sources: Application in the ZTF Real-time Pipeline journal November 2018
Quasar Accretion Disk Sizes from Continuum Reverberation Mapping from the Dark Energy Survey journal July 2018
Host Galaxy Identification for Supernova Surveys journal November 2016
GROWTH on S190426c: Real-time Search for a Counterpart to the Probable Neutron Star–Black Hole Merger using an Automated Difference Imaging Pipeline for DECam journal August 2019
The Dark Energy Survey Image Processing Pipeline text January 2018
Superluminous Supernovae from the Dark Energy Survey text January 2018
First Cosmology Results Using SNe Ia from the Dark Energy Survey: Analysis, Systematic Uncertainties, and Validation journal April 2019
Cosmological Constraints from Multiple Probes in the Dark Energy Survey journal May 2019
A Deep Learning Approach to Galaxy Cluster X-Ray Masses journal May 2019
Dynamical Analysis of Three Distant Trans-Neptunian Objects with Similar Orbits journal November 2018
Discovery and Dynamical Analysis of an Extreme Trans-Neptunian Object with a High Orbital Inclination journal August 2018
Machine-learning-based Brokers for Real-time Classification of the LSST Alert Stream journal May 2018
A transient search using combined human and machine classifications journal July 2017
A DECam Search for Explosive Optical Transients Associated with IceCube Neutrino Alerts journal September 2019
Characterizing the local relation between star formation rate and gas-phase metallicity in MaNGA spiral galaxies text January 2019
The Dark Energy Survey: more than dark energy – an overview journal March 2016
First Cosmology Results using Type Ia Supernovae from the Dark Energy Survey: Constraints on Cosmological Parameters journal February 2019
The Dark Energy Survey: more than dark energy - an overview text January 2016
Machine Learning-based Brokers for Real-time Classification of the LSST Alert Stream text January 2018
Dynamical Analysis of Three Distant Trans-Neptunian Objects with Similar Orbits text January 2018
A DECam Search for Explosive Optical Transients Associated with IceCube Neutrinos text January 2019
Characterizing the Local Relation between Star Formation Rate and Gas-phase Metallicity in MaNGA Spiral Galaxies journal August 2019
Rapidly evolving transients in the Dark Energy Survey journal August 2018
Machine Learning for the Zwicky Transient Facility journal January 2019
Optical Transient Object Classification in Wide-field Small Aperture Telescopes with a Neural Network journal June 2019
The Dark Energy Survey Image Processing Pipeline journal May 2018
Studying the Ultraviolet Spectrum of the First Spectroscopically Confirmed Supernova at Redshift Two journal February 2018
An analysis of feature relevance in the classification of astronomical transients with machine learning methods journal February 2016
First Cosmology Results Using Type Ia Supernovae from the Dark Energy Survey: Photometric Pipeline and Light-curve Data Release journal March 2019
First cosmology results using Type Ia supernova from the Dark Energy Survey: simulations to correct supernova distance biases journal February 2019
The Electromagnetic Counterpart of the Binary Neutron Star Merger LIGO/Virgo GW170817. I. Discovery of the Optical Counterpart Using the Dark Energy Camera journal October 2017
Rapidly evolving transients in the Dark Energy Survey text January 2018
Quasar Accretion Disk Sizes from Continuum Reverberation Mapping from the Dark Energy Survey text January 2018
Superluminous supernovae from the Dark Energy Survey journal May 2019

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Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
transients
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random forest
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97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING
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random forest