From seaman at lpl.arizona.edu Sat Feb 17 09:59:01 2018 From: seaman at lpl.arizona.edu (Rob Seaman) Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2018 07:59:01 -0700 Subject: [TDA_wg] Microlensing Data Challenge In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5b2ef244-d135-aab2-5a89-b9ee1fa2796d@lpl.arizona.edu> Of interest to the IAU Time Domain Working Group. -Rob -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Microlensing Data Challenge From: Rachel Street As a member of the WFIRST Microlensing Science Investigation Team, I recently launched a data challenge, with the goals of stimulating research into known problems with the modeling and analysis of timeseries data on microlensing events and of bringing more people from diverse backgrounds into this (currently too small) field.? ======================================= Microlensing Analysis Data Challenge The analysis and modeling of microlensing events has always been a computationally-intensive and time-consuming task, traditionally requiring a powerful computer cluster as well as well sampled lightcurves. While the number of interesting events with adequate data remained fairly low, it has been practical to perform a careful interactive analysis of each one, often with the aid of a powerful computer cluster. Even so, a number of challenges remain, particularly concerning the analysis of triple lenses. This is expected to change with next-generation surveys, especially with the launch of WFIRST. This mission is expected to detect thousands of microlensing events, including hundreds of planetary events. Clearly, our analysis techniques need an upgrade to fully exploit this dataset, and the currently-small microlensing community needs to grow. To stimulate research in this area, we are holding a series of data challenges, each based around the release of a large set of simulated WFIRST lightcurves.? The first dataset was recently released, with a submission deadline of Oct 31, 2018.? We are particularly keen to encourage participation by people from the astro-statistics and astro-informatics communities.?? For more information, please visit?http://microlensing-source.org/data-challenge/ . -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: