English

SuperWASP Variable Stars: Classifying Light Curves Using Citizen Science

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2021-01-27 v1

Abstract

We present the first analysis of results from the SuperWASP Variable Stars Zooniverse project, which is aiming to classify 1.6 million phase-folded light curves of candidate stellar variables observed by the SuperWASP all sky survey with periods detected in the SuperWASP periodicity catalogue. The resultant data set currently contains >>1 million classifications corresponding to >>500,000 object-period combinations, provided by citizen scientist volunteers. Volunteer-classified light curves have \sim89 per cent accuracy for detached and semi-detached eclipsing binaries, but only \sim9 per cent accuracy for rotationally modulated variables, based on known objects. We demonstrate that this Zooniverse project will be valuable for both population studies of individual variable types and the identification of stellar variables for follow up. We present preliminary findings on various unique and extreme variables in this analysis, including long period contact binaries and binaries near the short-period cutoff, and we identify 301 previously unknown binaries and pulsators. We are now in the process of developing a web portal to enable other researchers to access the outputs of the SuperWASP Variable Stars project.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2101.06216,
  title  = {SuperWASP Variable Stars: Classifying Light Curves Using Citizen Science},
  author = {Heidi B. Thiemann and Andrew J. Norton and Hugh J. Dickinson and Adam McMaster and Ulrich C. Kolb},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.06216},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in MNRAS, 13 pages, 16 figures, 4 tables

R2 v1 2026-06-23T22:12:40.204Z