Related papers: A likelihood function for the Gaia Data
Context. Kinematical data such as the mean velocities and velocity dispersions of stellar samples are useful tools to study galactic structure and evolution. However, observational data are often incomplete (e.g., lacking the radial…
Large catalogues are ubiquitous throughout astronomy, but most scientific analyses are carried out on smaller samples selected from these catalogues by chosen cuts on catalogued quantities. The selection function of that scientific sample -…
Context: Two-point correlation functions are used throughout cosmology as a measure for the statistics of random fields. When used in Bayesian parameter estimation, their likelihood function is usually replaced by a Gaussian approximation.…
Estimating a distance by inverting a parallax is only valid in the absence of noise. As most stars in the Gaia catalogue will have non-negligible fractional parallax errors, we must treat distance estimation as a constrained inference…
In the coming decade the Gaia satellite will precisely measure the positions and velocities of millions of stars in the Galactic halo, including stars in many tidal streams. These streams, the products of hierarchical accretion of satellite…
In an earlier work, we demonstrated the effectiveness of Bayesian neural networks in estimating the missing line-of-sight velocities of Gaia stars, and published an accompanying catalogue of blind predictions for the line-of-sight…
We produce a clean and well-characterised catalogue of objects within 100\,pc of the Sun from the \G\ Early Data Release 3. We characterise the catalogue through comparisons to the full data release, external catalogues, and simulations. We…
Context: Accurate distance measurements are fundamental to the study of Planetary Nebulae (PNe) but have long been elusive. The most accurate and model-independent distance measurements for galactic PNe come from the trigonometric…
The gravitational pull of an unseen companion to a luminous star is well-known to cause deviations to the parallax and proper motion of a star. In a previous paper in this series, we argue that the astrometric mission Gaia can identify…
Likelihood functions are ubiquitous in data analyses at the LHC and elsewhere in particle physics. Partly because "probability" and "likelihood" are virtual synonyms in everyday English, but crucially distinct in data analysis, there is…
Context. This study has been developed in the framework of the computational simulations executed for the preparation of the ESA Gaia astrometric mission. Aims. We focus on describing the objects and characteristics that Gaia will…
Galaxy cluster surveys offer great promise for measuring cosmological parameters, but survey analysis methods have not been widely studied. Using methods developed decades ago for galaxy clustering studies, it is shown that nearly exact…
We describe a simple probabilistic method to cross-identify astrophysical sources from different catalogs and provide the probability that a source is associated with a source from another catalog or that it has no counterpart. When the…
Selection functions are vital for understanding the observational biases of spectroscopic surveys. With the wide variety of multi-object spectrographs currently in operation and becoming available soon, we require easily generalisable…
We describe methods designed to determine the astrophysical parameters of quasars based on spectra coming from the red and blue spectrophotometers of the Gaia satellite. These methods principally rely on two already published algorithms…
Gaia is a cornerstone mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) selected in 2000, with a target launch date of 2011. The Gaia mission will perform a survey of about 1 billion sources brighter than V=20. Its goal is to provide astrometry…
The likelihood function represents statistical evidence in the context of data and a probability model. Considerable theory has demonstrated that evidence strength for different parameter values can be interpreted from the ratio of…
We present a mock stellar catalog, matching in volume, depth and data model the content of the planned Gaia early data release 3 (Gaia EDR3). We have generated our catalog (GeDR3mock) using galaxia, a tool to sample stars from an underlying…
Astronomical instruments make intensity measurements; any precise astronomical experiment ought to involve modeling those measurements. People make catalogues, but because a catalogue requires hard decisions about calibration and detection,…
We investigate whether a Gaussian likelihood is sufficient to obtain accurate parameter constraints from a Euclid-like combined tomographic power spectrum analysis of weak lensing, galaxy clustering and their cross-correlation. Testing its…