Third SMASH Seminar

At the seminar director of Konkoly Observatory, Hungary, Robert Szabo will give a talk on: "Variable Star Classification with Machine Learning".

Abstract:

Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) is one of the most important ground-based astronomy projects of the coming decade. Among other things it will deliver an immense database of time-variable phenomena from moving solar system objects to stars that change their brightness. First, I will give a short introduction to machine learning methods, then briefly present the LSST project, and the astrophysical importance of variable stars. Then, in the second part of my presentation I will talk about my research group's work on classification of variable stars with machine learning methods which is part of the Hungarian in-kind LSST contribution. The novelty of our method is that we use images of light curves, such as a human classifier would do. The method gives surprisingly good results based on the shape of light curves only, but can be further improved if additional astrophysical parameters (distance, amplitude, colours, etc.) are taken into account.