Issue |
A&A
Volume 687, July 2024
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A24 | |
Number of page(s) | 25 | |
Section | Numerical methods and codes | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202348239 | |
Published online | 26 June 2024 |
Galaxy merger challenge: A comparison study between machine learning-based detection methods
1
SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research,
Landleven 12,
9747 AD
Groningen,
The Netherlands
e-mail: B.Margalef.Bentabol@sron.nl
2
Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen,
Postbus 800,
9700 AV
Groningen,
The Netherlands
3
Centro de Astrobiología (CAB), CSIC-INTA,
Carretera de Ajalvir km4,
28850
Torrejón de Ardoz,
Madrid,
Spain
4
Astronomical Observatory of the Jagiellonian University, Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Applied Computer Science,
ul. Orla 171,
30-244
Cracow,
Poland
5
Centro de Estudios de Física del Cosmos de Aragón (CEFCA),
Plaza San Juan 1,
44001
Teruel,
Spain
6
Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University,
4 Ivy Lane,
Princeton,
NJ
08544,
USA
7
Instituto de Radioastronomía y Astrofísica, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México,
Apdo. Postal 72-3,
58089
Morelia,
Mexico
8
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias,
c/ Via Lactea sn,
38025
La Laguna,
Spain
9
Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute,
776 Daedeokdae-ro, Yuseong-gu,
Daejeon
34055,
Korea
10
Steward Observatory, University of Arizona,
933 N. Cherry Ave,
Tucson,
AZ,
USA
11
National Centre for Nuclear Research,
Pasteura 7,
02-093
Warszawa,
Poland
12
Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Manchester,
Oxford Road,
Manchester
M13 9PL,
UK
13
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria,
Victoria, British Columbia
V8P 1A1,
Canada
14
International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, University of Western Australia,
35 Stirling Hwy,
Crawley,
WA
6009,
Australia
15
Department of Physics, Lancaster University,
Bailrigg, Lancaster
LA1 4YB,
UK
Received:
11
October
2023
Accepted:
19
March
2024
Aims. Various galaxy merger detection methods have been applied to diverse datasets. However, it is difficult to understand how they compare. Our aim is to benchmark the relative performance of merger detection methods based on machine learning (ML).
Methods. We explore six leading ML methods using three main datasets. The first dataset consists of mock observations from the IllustrisTNG simulations, which acts as the training data and allows us to quantify the performance metrics of the detection methods. The second dataset consists of mock observations from the Horizon-AGN simulations, introduced to evaluate the performance of classifiers trained on different, but comparable data to those employed for training. The third dataset is composed of real observations from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP) survey. We also compare mergers and non-mergers detected by the different methods with a subset of HSC-SSP visually identified galaxies.
Results. For the simplest binary classification task (i.e. mergers vs. non-mergers), all six methods perform reasonably well in the domain of the training data. At the lowest redshift explored 0.1 < ɀ < 0.3, precision and recall generally range between ~70% and 80%, both of which decrease with increasing ɀ as expected (by ~5% for precision and ~10% for recall at the highest ɀ explored 0.76 < ɀ < 1.0). When transferred to a different domain, the precision of all classifiers is only slightly reduced, but the recall is significantly worse (by ~20–40% depending on the method). Zoobot offers the best overall performance in terms of precision and F1 score. When applied to real HSC observations, different methods agree well with visual labels of clear mergers, but can differ by more than an order of magnitude in predicting the overall fraction of major mergers. For the more challenging multi-class classification task to distinguish between pre-mergers, ongoing-mergers, and post-mergers, none of the methods in their current set-ups offer good performance, which could be partly due to the limitations in resolution and the depth of the data. In particular, ongoing-mergers and post-mergers are much more difficult to classify than pre-mergers. With the advent of better quality data (e.g. from JWST and Euclid), it is of great importance to improve our ability to detect mergers and distinguish between merger stages.
Key words: methods: numerical / techniques: image processing / surveys / galaxies: evolution / galaxies: interactions / galaxies: structure
© The Authors 2024
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This article is published in open access under the Subscribe to Open model. Subscribe to A&A to support open access publication.
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.