Period analysis of variable stars by robust smoothing

Hee‐Seok Oh, Doug Nychka, Tim Brown and Paul Charbonneau

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, 2004, vol. 53, issue 1, 15-30

Abstract: Summary. The objective is to estimate the period and the light curve (or periodic function) of a variable star. Previously, several methods have been proposed to estimate the period of a variable star, but they are inaccurate especially when a data set contains outliers. We use a smoothing spline regression to estimate the light curve given a period and then find the period which minimizes the generalized cross‐validation (GCV). The GCV method works well, matching an intensive visual examination of a few hundred stars, but the GCV score is still sensitive to outliers. Handling outliers in an automatic way is important when this method is applied in a ‘data mining’ context to a vary large star survey. Therefore, we suggest a robust method which minimizes a robust cross‐validation criterion induced by a robust smoothing spline regression. Once the period has been determined, a nonparametric method is used to estimate the light curve. A real example and a simulation study suggest that the robust cross‐validation and GCV methods are superior to existing methods.

Date: 2004
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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