AutoSourceID-Light

Astronomy and Astrophysics, vol. 662, pp. A109

Abstract

Aims.With the ever-increasing survey speed of optical wide-field telescopes and the importance of discovering transients when they are still young, rapid and reliable source localization is paramount. We present AutoSourceID-Light (ASID-L), an innovative framework that uses computer vision techniques that can naturally deal with large amounts of data and rapidly localize sources in optical images. Methods.We show that the ASID-L algorithm based on U-shaped networks and enhanced with a Laplacian of Gaussian filter provides outstanding performance in the localization of sources. A U-Net network discerns the sources in the images from many different artifacts and passes the result to a Laplacian of Gaussian filter that then estimates the exact location. Results.Using ASID-L on the optical images of the MeerLICHT telescope demonstrates the great speed and localization power of the method. We compare the results with SExtractor and show that our method outperforms this more widely used method. ASID-L rapidly detects more sources not only in low- and mid-density fields, but particularly in areas with more than 150 sources per square arcminute. The training set and code used in this paper are publicly available.

Authors 11

1. Fiorenzo Stoppa

   Radboud University Nijmegen

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Astrophysics/IMAPP, Radboud University, PO Box 9010, 6500 GL The Netherlands

   Department of Mathematics/IMAPP, Radboud University, PO Box 9010, 6500 GL Nijmegen, The Netherlands

2. Paul M. Vreeswijk

   Radboud University Nijmegen

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Astrophysics/IMAPP, Radboud University, PO Box 9010, 6500 GL The Netherlands

3. S. Bloemen

   Radboud University Nijmegen

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Astrophysics/IMAPP, Radboud University, PO Box 9010, 6500 GL The Netherlands

4. Saptashwa Bhattacharyya

   University of Nova Gorica

   Affiliation as printed

   Center for Astrophysics and Cosmology, University of Nova Gorica, Vipavska 13, 5000 Nova Gorica, Slovenia

5. S. Caron

   Radboud University Nijmegen · National Institute for Subatomic Physics

   Affiliation as printed

   High Energy Physics/IMAPP, Radboud University, PO Box 9010, 6500 GL Nijmegen, The Netherlands

   Nikhef, Science Park 105, 1098 XG Amsterdam, The Netherlands

6. G. Jóhannesson

   University of Iceland

   Affiliation as printed

   Science Institute, University of Iceland, IS-107 Reykjavik, Iceland

7. C. van den Oetelaar

   Radboud University Nijmegen

   Affiliation as printed

   High Energy Physics/IMAPP, Radboud University, PO Box 9010, 6500 GL Nijmegen, The Netherlands

8. Gabrijela Zaharijaš

   University of Nova Gorica · Institute for Fundamental Physics of the Universe

   Affiliation as printed

   Center for Astrophysics and Cosmology, University of Nova Gorica, Vipavska 13, 5000 Nova Gorica, Slovenia

   Institute for Fundamental Physics of the Universe, Via Beirut 2, 34151 Trieste, Italy

9. P. Groot

   Radboud University Nijmegen · University of Cape Town · Inter-university Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy · South African Astronomical Observatory

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Astronomy, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X3, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa

   Department of Astrophysics/IMAPP, Radboud University, PO Box 9010, 6500 GL The Netherlands

   South African Astronomical Observatory, PO Box 9, Observatory, 7935 Cape Town, South Africa

   The Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X3, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa

10. Eric Cator

    Radboud University Nijmegen

    Affiliation as printed

    Department of Mathematics/IMAPP, Radboud University, PO Box 9010, 6500 GL Nijmegen, The Netherlands

11. Gijs Nelemans Aachen Netherlands Institute for Space Research

    Radboud University Nijmegen · Space Research Organisation Netherlands · KU Leuven

    Affiliation as printed

    Department of Astrophysics/IMAPP, Radboud University, PO Box 9010, 6500 GL The Netherlands

    Institute of Astronomy, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200D, 3001 Leuven, Belgium

    SRON, Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Sorbonnelaan 2, 3584 CA Utrecht, The Netherlands