The Cosmostatistics Initiative

The Cosmostatistics Initiative (COIN) is an international network which aims to create an interdisciplinary environment where collaborations between astronomers, statisticians and machine learning experts can flourish. The group utilizes a management model which can find parallel in technological start-ups:  based on a dynamic, non-hierarchical and people-centric approach.

The Toliman Telescope

 

The TOLIMAN space telescope is a low-cost, agile mission concept dedicated to astrometric detection of exoplanets in the near-solar environment, and particularly targeting the Alpha Cen system. Although successful discovery technologies are now populating exoplanetary catalogs into the thousands, contemporary astronomy is still poorly equipped to answer the basic question of whether there are any rocky planets orbiting any particular star system. Toliman will make a first study of stars within 10 PC of the sun by deploying an innovative optical and signal encoding architecture that leverages the most promising technology to deliver data on this critical stellar sample: high precision astrometric monitoring. 

The COIN-Focus Toliman edition is a collaborative effort to discuss and develop methodological data analysis strategies that will make possible the TOLIMAN mission of detecting habitable exoplanets around our nearest stars. The team is formed by researchers from both collaborations working together in the design of a joint signal-processing and statistical inference system to enable the detection of exoplanets from diffractive pupil based relative astrometry from space.

This event is the first face to face meeting of the COIN-Toliman team.

The logistic of the this meeting will be adapted from the format developed during the COIN Residence Programs where tasks and discussions are agreed upon by the team before the meeting. There are no scheduled talks or any kind of formal presentation.

 

Organizers


Alberto
Krone-Martins

U.Lisbon, Portugal


Emille E. O. Ishida
CNRS/UCA, France


Peter Tuthill
U. Sydney, Australia


Rafael S. de Souza
UNC, USA

Location



Rome is the capital city of Italy. It is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio (Latium), along the shores of the Tiber. The Vatican City (the smallest country in the world)[3] is an independent country inside the city boundaries of Rome, the only existing example of a country within a city: for this reason Rome has been often defined as capital of two states.

As in 2019 Rome is ranked as an Alpha - global city in the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. In 2016, Rome ranked as the 14th-most-visited city in the world, 3rd most visited in the European Union, and the most popular tourist attraction in Italy. Its historic centre is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. Host city for the 1960 Summer Olympics, Rome is the seat of several specialized agencies of the United Nations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The city also hosts the Secretariat of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean[15] (UfM) as well as the headquarters of many international business companies such as Eni, Enel, TIM, Leonardo S.p.A., and national and international banks such as Unicredit and BNL. Its business district, called EUR, is the base of many companies involved in the oil industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and financial services. Rome is also an important fashion and design centre thanks to renowned international brands centered in the city. Rome's Cinecitta Studios have been the set of many Academy Award–winning movies.

Code of Conduct

The COIN-Toliman team is composed of members from around the globe with a diverse set of skills, personalities, and experiences. 

We require participants to follow these guidelines which help steer our interactions and strive to keep this an enlightening experience for all members involved.

This event will be a harassment-free environment for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof) or technology choices.

Participants violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from the meeting at the discretion of the organizers.

 

Directives:

Behave professionally. Exclusionary or offensive comments or jokes related to personal attributes are not appropriate.

Be receptive to constructive comment and criticism, as the experiences and skill sets of other members contribute to the whole of our efforts.

Be thoughtful when addressing the efforts of others, keeping in mind that often times the labor was completed simply for the good of the group.

Be good and respectful to each other.

This is a strictly non-smoking event. Smoking is not allowed anywhere inside the venue.

Unacceptable behavior includes, but is not limited to, sustained disruption of talks or other events, unwelcome physical contact, sexual attention or innuendo, intimidation, stalking, and recording of an individual without consent.

Communicate appropriately. Aim for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds. Sexual language and imagery are not acceptable.

based on policies from  COIN Residence Program


Participants


Alberto
Krone-Martins

U.Lisbon, Portugal


Emille E. O. Ishida
CNRS/UCA, France


Louis Charles Desdoigts
U. Sydney, Australia


Michele
Delli Veneri

INAF, Italy


Morgan A. Schmitz
CosmoStat, France

 

Peter Tuthill
U. Sydney, Australia


Rafael S. de Souza
UNC, USA


Richard Scalzol
U. Sydney, Australia

 

Results



Periodic Astrometric Signal Recovery through Convolutional Autoencoders

Pre-print - Project page

Astrometric detection involves a precise measurement of stellar positions, and is widely regarded as the leading concept presently ready to find earth-mass planets in temperate orbits around nearby sun-like stars. The TOLIMAN space telescope is a low-cost, agile mission concept dedicated to narrow-angle astrometric monitoring of bright binary stars. In particular the mission will be optimised to search for habitable-zone planets around Alpha Centauri AB. In this paper we demonstrate that a Deep Convolutional Auto-Encoder is able to retrieve such a signal from simplified simulations of the TOLIMAN data and we present the full experimental pipeline to recreate out experiments from the simulations to the signal analysis.


Memories of a Roman retreat


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