Related papers: The Lutz-Kelker Paradox
Cross-correlation of consecutive Doppler images is one of the most common techniques used to detect surface differential rotation (hereafter DR) on spotted stars. The disadvantage of a single cross-correlation is, however, that the expected…
The cross-identification of sources in separate catalogs is one of the most basic tasks in observational astronomy. It is, however, surprisingly difficult and generally ill-defined. Recently Budav\'ari & Szalay (2008) formulated the problem…
Bayes' Theorem imposes inevitable limitations on the accuracy of screening tests by tying the test's predictive value to the disease prevalence. The aforementioned limitation is independent of the adequacy and make-up of the test and thus…
This work presents a comprehensive examination of the use of information theory for understanding Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) images by means of contrast measures that can be used as test statistics. Due to the phenomenon…
We study concentration inequalities for the Kullback--Leibler (KL) divergence between the empirical distribution and the true distribution. Applying a recursion technique, we improve over the method of types bound uniformly in all regimes…
The Jeffreys-Lindley paradox exposes a rift between Bayesian and frequentist hypothesis testing that strikes at the heart of statistical inference. Contrary to what most current literature suggests, the paradox was central to the Bayesian…
Star clusters are studied widely both as benchmarks for stellar evolution models and in their own right. Cluster age and mass distributions within galaxies are probes of star formation histories, and of cluster formation and disruption…
Model misspecification is a long-standing enigma of the Bayesian inference framework as posteriors tend to get overly concentrated on ill-informed parameter values towards the large sample limit. Tempering of the likelihood has been…
We investigate recent claims by Secrest et al. of an anomalously large amplitude of the dipole in the distribution of CatWISE-selected quasars on the sky. Two main issues indicate that the systematic uncertainties in the derived…
We systematically study pulsar light curves, taking into account the special relativistic effect, i.e., the Doppler factor due to the fast spin of the neutron stars, together with the time delay, which comes from the difference of the…
I describe a Bayesian method to account for measurement errors in linear regression of astronomical data. The method allows for heteroscedastic and possibly correlated measurement errors, and intrinsic scatter in the regression…
I used the 2.4 m Hiltner telescope at MDM Observatory in an attempt to measure trigonometric parallaxes for 14 cataclysmic variable stars. Techniques are described in detail. In the best cases the parallax uncertainties are below 1 mas, and…
In the hypothesis testing framework, p-value is often computed to determine rejection of the null hypothesis or not. On the other hand, Bayesian approaches typically compute the posterior probability of the null hypothesis to evaluate its…
Gravitational lensing allows to quantify the angular distribution of the convergence field around clusters of galaxies to constrain their connectivity to the cosmic web. We describe in this paper the corresponding theory in Lagrangian space…
CONTEXT. Claims of an X-shaped Galactic bulge were based on the assumption of red clump stars as standard candles in some lines of sight crossing the off-plane bulge. However, some doubts have been cast on whether the two peaks in star…
We reconsider calibration of statistical distance scales for planetary nebulae, examining precision and systematic error for various distance methods used as well as the scales themselves. A different calibration strategy, one based on…
Determination of absolute parallaxes by means of a scanning astrometric satellite such as Hipparcos or Gaia relies on the short-term stability of the so-called basic angle between the two viewing directions. Uncalibrated variations of the…
With several detections, the technique of gravitational microlensing has proven useful for studying planets that orbit stars at Galactic distances, and it can even be applied to detect planets in neighbouring galaxies. So far, planet…
We examine the scenario that the Doppler factor determines the observational differences of blazars in this paper. Significantly negative correlations are found between the observational synchrotron peak frequency and the Doppler factor.…
Glitches are commonly observed for pulsars, which are explained by various mechanisms. One hypothesis attributes the glitch effect to the instantaneous moment of inertia change of the whole star caused by a starquake, which is similar to…