Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Galactic Component Mapping Of Galaxy Ugc 2885 By Machine Learning Classification, Robin J. Kwik, Jinfei Wang, Pauline Barmby, Benne Holwerda

Faculty Scholarship

Automating classification of galaxy components is important for understanding the formation and evolution of galaxies. Traditionally, only the larger galaxy structures such as the spiral arms, bulge, and disc are classified. Here we use machine learning (ML) pixel-by-pixel classification to automatically classify all galaxy components within digital imagery of massive spiral galaxy UGC 2885. Galaxy components include young stellar population, old stellar population, dust lanes, galaxy center, outer disc, and celestial background. We test three ML models: maximum likelihood classifier (MLC), random forest (RF), and support vector machine (SVM). We use high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope (HST) digital …