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Data Compression Methods in Astrophysics

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Statistical Challenges in Modern Astronomy V

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Statistics ((LNSP,volume 902))

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Abstract

Astrophysics is an observational science and as such it is gathering data from the whole sky. The availability of large CCD cameras on telescopes with large fields of view is permitting the collection of large amount of data. Eventually an observational astrophysicist would like to collect all information available in the sky. This however brings some problems as one usually has “too many” data and new techniques are required to analyse them. In this chapter I will provide a (biased) view of how the problem can be addressed using new statistical tools to achieve data compression of the data. Note that when I talk about data compression in astrophysics I will always refer to algorithms that are able to massively accelerate likelihood computations of comparing data with models and not about “throwing” data away. In particular I will illustrate how to deal with data from galaxy surveys, exoplanet light-transit searches and direct gravitational wave searches.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This is chosen ad hoc. We have tried other approaches all of which work similarly well. Averaging turned out to be the functional form in which, error and confidence level of the measurement, could be easily and analytically calculated.

References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ICREA & ICC, University of Barcelona (UB-IEEC), Marti i Franques 1, Barcelona, 08028, Spain

    Raul Jimenez

Authors
  1. Raul Jimenez
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Raul Jimenez .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Dept. Astronomy & Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, 518 Davey Lab, University Park, 16802, Pennsylvania, USA

    Eric D. Feigelson

  2. , Department of Statistics, Pennsylvania State University, 417C Thomas Building, University Park, 16802, Pennsylvania, USA

    G. Jogesh Babu

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© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Jimenez, R. (2012). Data Compression Methods in Astrophysics. In: Feigelson, E., Babu, G. (eds) Statistical Challenges in Modern Astronomy V. Lecture Notes in Statistics(), vol 902. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3520-4_29

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