Rotating Stars and Revolving Planets: Bayesian Exploration of the Pulsating Sky*
Thomas J. Loredo · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2011
I describe ongoing work on the 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.