Related papers: Probabilistic record linkage in astronomy: Directi…

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…

The next decade of survey astronomy has the potential to transform our knowledge of variable stars. Stellar variability underpins our knowledge of the cosmological distance ladder, and provides direct tests of stellar formation and…

Over the past century, major advances in astronomy and astrophysics have been largely driven by improvements in instrumentation and data collection. With the amassing of high quality data from new telescopes, and especially with the advent…

We describe the development of a system for an automated, iterative, real-time classification of transient events discovered in synoptic sky surveys. The system under development incorporates a number of Machine Learning techniques, mostly…

Survey telescopes such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and the Square Kilometre Array will discover billions of static and dynamic astronomical sources. Properly mined, these enormous datasets will likely be wellsprings of rare or unknown…

In an era of large spectroscopic surveys of stars and big data, sophisticated statistical methods become more and more important in order to infer fundamental stellar parameters such as mass and age. Bayesian techniques are powerful methods…

To perform precise and accurate photometric catalogue cross-matches -- assigning counterparts between two separate datasets -- we need to describe all possible sources of uncertainty in object position. With ever-increasing time baselines…

This is a summary of the `Astronomy Perspective' of the 4th meeting on 'Statistical Challenges in Modern Astronomy' held at Penn State University in June 2006. We comment on trends in the Astronomy community towards Bayesian methods and…

Galaxy shapes are not randomly oriented, rather they are statistically aligned in a way that can depend on formation environment, history and galaxy type. Studying the alignment of galaxies can therefore deliver important information about…

The nature of scientific and technological data collection is evolving rapidly: data volumes and rates grow exponentially, with increasing complexity and information content, and there has been a transition from static data sets to data…

Recent X-ray observations have had a major impact on topics ranging from protostars to cosmology. They have also drawn attention to important and general physical processes that currently limit our understanding of thermal and nonthermal…

The widespread dissemination of machine learning tools in science, particularly in astronomy, has revealed the limitation of working with simple single-task scenarios in which any task in need of a predictive model is looked in isolation,…

Identification of local structure in intensive data -- such as time series, images, and higher dimensional processes -- is an important problem in astronomy. Since the data are typically generated by an inhomogeneous Poisson process, an…

This paper is based on the opening lecture given at the 2017 edition of the Evry Schatzman school on high-angular resolution imaging of stars and their direct environment. Two relevant observing techniques: long baseline interferometry and…

Data challenges are emerging as powerful tools with which to answer fundamental astronomical questions. Time-domain astronomy lends itself to data challenges, particularly in the era of classification and anomaly detection. With improved…

This perspective chapter briefly surveys: (1) past growth in the use of Bayesian methods in astrophysics; (2) current misconceptions about both frequentist and Bayesian statistical inference that hinder wider adoption of Bayesian methods by…

Clustering objects into synthetic groups is a natural activity of any science. Astrophysics is not an exception and is now facing a deluge of data. For galaxies, the one-century old Hubble classification and the Hubble tuning fork are still…

Observational astrophysics uses sophisticated technology to collect and measure electromagnetic and other radiation from beyond the Earth. Modern observatories produce large, complex datasets and extracting the maximum possible information…

All sciences, including astronomy, are now entering the era of information abundance. The exponentially increasing volume and complexity of modern data sets promises to transform the scientific practice, but also poses a number of common…

We have been recently faced with the problem of cross--identifying stars recorded in historical catalogues with those extracted from recent fully digitized surveys (such as DENIS and 2MASS). Positions mentioned in the old catalogues are…