PHANGS-JWST: Data-processing Pipeline and First Full Public Data Release

The Astrophysical Journal: Supplement Series American Astronomical Society 273:1 (2024) 13

Authors:

Thomas G Williams, Janice C Lee, Kirsten L Larson, Adam K Leroy, Karin Sandstrom, Eva Schinnerer, David A Thilker, Francesco Belfiore, Oleg V Egorov, Erik Rosolowsky, Jessica Sutter, Joseph DePasquale, Alyssa Pagan, Travis A Berger, Gagandeep S Anand, Ashley T Barnes, Frank Bigiel, Médéric Boquien, Yixian Cao, Jérémy Chastenet, Mélanie Chevance, Ryan Chown, Daniel A Dale, Sinan Deger

Abstract:

The exquisite angular resolution and sensitivity of JWST are opening a new window for our understanding of the Universe. In nearby galaxies, JWST observations are revolutionizing our understanding of the first phases of star formation and the dusty interstellar medium. Nineteen local galaxies spanning a range of properties and morphologies across the star-forming main sequence have been observed as part of the PHANGS-JWST Cycle 1 Treasury program at spatial scales of ∼5–50 pc. Here, we describe pjpipe, an image-processing pipeline developed for the PHANGS-JWST program that wraps around and extends the official JWST pipeline. We release this pipeline to the community as it contains a number of tools generally useful for JWST NIRCam and MIRI observations. Particularly for extended sources, pjpipe products provide significant improvements over mosaics from the MAST archive in terms of removing instrumental noise in NIRCam data, background flux matching, and calibration of relative and absolute astrometry. We show that slightly smoothing F2100W MIRI data to 0.″9 (degrading the resolution by about 30%) reduces the noise by a factor of ≈3. We also present the first public release (DR1.1.0) of the pjpipe processed eight-band 2–21 μm imaging for all 19 galaxies in the PHANGS-JWST Cycle 1 Treasury program. An additional 55 galaxies will soon follow from a new PHANGS-JWST Cycle 2 Treasury program.

Galaxy Zoo DESI: large-scale bars as a secular mechanism for triggering AGNs

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press (OUP) 532:2 (2024) 2320-2330

Authors:

Izzy L Garland, Mike Walmsley, Maddie S Silcock, Leah M Potts, Josh Smith, Brooke D Simmons, Chris J Lintott, Rebecca J Smethurst, James M Dawson, William C Keel, Sandor Kruk, Kameswara Bharadwaj Mantha, Karen L Masters, David O’Ryan, Jürgen J Popp, Matthew R Thorne

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon emission in galaxies as seen with JWST

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press (OUP) 532:2 (2024) 1598-1611

Authors:

D Rigopoulou, FR Donnan, I García-Bernete, M Pereira-Santaella, A Alonso-Herrero, R Davies, LK Hunt, PF Roche, T Shimizu

The stellar fundamental metallicity relation: the correlation between stellar mass, star formation rate, and stellar metallicity

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press (OUP) 532:2 (2024) 2832-2841

Authors:

Tobias J Looser, Francesco D’Eugenio, Joanna M Piotrowska, Francesco Belfiore, Roberto Maiolino, Michele Cappellari, William M Baker, Sandro Tacchella

LtU-ILI: An All-in-One Framework for Implicit Inference in Astrophysics and Cosmology

The Open Journal of Astrophysics Maynooth University 7 (2024)

Authors:

Matthew Ho, Deaglan J Bartlett, Nicolas Chartier, Carolina Cuesta-Lazaro, Simon Ding, Axel Lapel, Pablo Lemos, Christopher C Lovell, T Lucas Makinen, Chirag Modi, Viraj Pandya, Shivam Pandey, Lucia A Perez, Benjamin Wandelt, Greg L Bryan

Abstract:

<jats:p>This paper presents the Learning the Universe Implicit Likelihood Inference (LtU-ILI) pipeline, a codebase for rapid, user-friendly, and cutting-edge machine learning (ML) inference in astrophysics and cosmology. The pipeline includes software for implementing various neural architectures, training schema, priors, and density estimators in a manner easily adaptable to any research workflow. It includes comprehensive validation metrics to assess posterior estimate coverage, enhancing the reliability of inferred results. Additionally, the pipeline is easily parallelizable, designed for efficient exploration of modeling hyperparameters. To demonstrate its capabilities, we present real applications across a range of astrophysics and cosmology problems, such as: estimating galaxy cluster masses from X-ray photometry; inferring cosmology from matter power spectra and halo point clouds; characterising progenitors in gravitational wave signals; capturing physical dust parameters from galaxy colors and luminosities; and establishing properties of semi-analytic models of galaxy formation. We also include exhaustive benchmarking and comparisons of all implemented methods as well as discussions about the challenges and pitfalls of ML inference in astronomical sciences. All code and examples are made publicly available at https://github.com/maho3/ltu-ili.</jats:p>