Rotating Stars and Revolving Planets: Bayesian Exploration of the Pulsating Sky
Abstract
I describe ongoing work on development of Bayesian methods for exploring periodically varying phenomena in astronomy, addressing two classes of sources: pulsars, and extrasolar planets (exoplanets). For pulsars, the methods aim to detect and measure periodically varying signals in data consisting of photon arrival times, modeled as non-homogeneous Poisson point processes. For exoplanets, the methods address detection and estimation of planetary orbits using observations of the reflex motion "wobble" of a host star, including adaptive scheduling of observations to optimize inferences.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1107.5805,
title = {Rotating Stars and Revolving Planets: Bayesian Exploration of the Pulsating Sky},
author = {Thomas J. Loredo},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1107.5805},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
28 pages, 6 figures. Invited discussion paper for the Ninth Valencia International Conference on Bayesian Statistics (discussant was Peter Mueller); to appear in "Bayesian Statistics 9," ed. by Jos\'e M. Bernardo et al., Oxford University Press (2011); see http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199694587.do