Rotating Stars and Revolving Planets: Bayesian Exploration of the Pulsating Sky

Abstract

I describe ongoing work on development of Bayesian methods for exploring periodically varying phenomena in astronomy, addressing two classes of sources: pulsars, and extrasolar planets (exoplanets). For pulsars, the methods aim to detect and measure periodically varying signals in data consisting of photon arrival times, modeled as non-homogeneous Poisson point processes. For exoplanets, the methods address detection and estimation of planetary orbits using observations of the reflex motion "wobble" of a host star, including adaptive scheduling of observations to optimize inferences.

28 pages, 6 figures. Invited discussion paper for the Ninth Valencia International Conference on Bayesian Statistics (discussant was Peter Mueller); to appear in "Bayesian Statistics 9," ed. by José M. Bernardo et al., Oxford University Press (2011); see http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199694587.do

References in corpus (3)

• A Bayesian Kepler Periodogram detects a second planet in HD 208487
• Tailor-made tests for goodness of fit to semiparametric hypotheses
• ExoFit: Orbital Parameters of Extra-solar Planets from Radial Velocities

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