At present, low-mass, cool M dwarfs are the prime targets of planet searches, since the habitable zone is much closer to the central object in cool stars than in the case of a solar-like star; thus, detecting a possibly habitable Earth-like planet is easier. However, the late spectral type of these stars and the magnetic activity associated with these could pose a threat to habitability. To...
The use of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) as standardizable candles led to the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe and cemented their role in the quest to understand the nature of dark energy. Accurate cosmological parameter estimation requires a sample of pure SNe Ia with minimal non-Ia contamination, but spectroscopic confirmation of supernova type is...
The Neil Gehrels "Swift" Observatory has been detecting and measuring emission from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and their associated afterglow for the last 17 years. Today, over 1500 bursts have been observed, with light curves displaying different morphologies in the succession of decay regimes with time. We explore prospects for acquiring physical inference from machine-learning models by...
Time-domain astronomy has reached an incredible new era where unprecedented amounts of data are becoming available. New large-scale astronomical surveys such as the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) are going to revolutionise transient astronomy, providing opportunities to discover entirely new classes of transients while also enabling a deeper understanding of known supernovae. LSST is...
Time-domain astronomy has reached an incredible new era where unprecedented amounts of data are becoming available. New large-scale astronomical surveys such as the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) are going to revolutionise transient astronomy, providing opportunities to discover entirely new classes of transients while also enabling a deeper understanding of known supernovae. LSST is...
At present, low-mass, cool M dwarfs are the prime targets of planet searches, since the habitable zone is much closer to the central object in cool stars than in the case of a solar-like star; thus, detecting a possibly habitable Earth-like planet is easier. However, the late spectral type of these stars and the magnetic activity associated with these could pose a threat to habitability. To...
The latest advances in deep learning techniques have provided new effective prediction models that allow forecasting in detail the evolution of cosmogeophysical time series such as the solar activity, which is also crucial to anticipate potentially adverse space weather effects on the Earth’s environment.
Because of the underlying complexity of the quasi-periodic solar dynamo mechanism, the...
Exoplanet transit surveys produce flux time-series for
hundreds of thousands of stars to search for the tell-tale signs of a
transiting planet. In the process, they provide a rich dataset for the
application of machine learning (ML) methods. One focus so far has been
the classification of exoplanet signals as genuine or instrumental false
positives, particularly by using deep neural...