Globular cluster detection in the Gaia survey

2018

Existing algorithms for the detection of stellar structures in the Milky Way are most efficient when full phase-space and color information is available. This is rarely the case. Since recently, the Gaia satellite surveys the whole sky and is providing highly accurate positions for more than one billion sources. In this contribution we propose two independent strategies to find globular clusters in this database, based on magnitude distributions only. One approach is a nearest neighbor retrieval and the other an anomaly detection. Both techniques are able to find known globular clusters within our observation frame consistently, as well as additional candidates for further investigation.

@inproceedings{Mohammadi2018Gaia,
author = {Mohammadi, Mohammad and Peletier, R. F. and Schleif, F.M. and Petkov, N and Bunte, Kerstin},
title = {Globular cluster detection in the Gaia survey},
booktitle = {Proc. of the  26th "European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks (ESANN)},
pages = {327--332},
year = {2018},
publisher = {D-facto Publications},
editor = {M. Verleysen},
abstract = {Existing algorithms for the detection of stellar structures in the Milky Way are most efficient when full phase-space and color information is available.    This is rarely the case.    Since recently, the Gaia satellite surveys the whole sky and is providing highly accurate positions for more than one billion sources.    In this contribution we propose two independent strategies to find globular clusters in this database, based on magnitude distributions only.    One approach is a nearest neighbor retrieval and the other an anomaly detection. Both techniques are able to find known globular clusters within our observation frame consistently,    as well as additional candidates for further investigation.   },
}