SKA Science Data Challenge 2: analysis and results
Journal article, 2023
The Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO) will explore the radio sky to new depths in order to conduct transformational science. SKAO data products made available to astronomers will be correspondingly large and complex, requiring the application of advanced analysis techniques to extract key science findings. To this end, SKAO is conducting a series of Science Data Challenges, each designed to familiarize the scientific community with SKAO data and to drive the development of new analysis techniques. We present the results from Science Data Challenge 2 (SDC2), which invited participants to find and characterize 233 245 neutral hydrogen (H i) sources in a simulated data product representing a 2000 h SKA-Mid spectral line observation from redshifts 0.25-0.5. Through the generous support of eight international supercomputing facilities, participants were able to undertake the Challenge using dedicated computational resources. Alongside the main challenge, 'reproducibility awards' were made in recognition of those pipelines which demonstrated Open Science best practice. The Challenge saw over 100 participants develop a range of new and existing techniques, with results that highlight the strengths of multidisciplinary and collaborative effort. The winning strategy - which combined predictions from two independent machine learning techniques to yield a 20 per cent improvement in overall performance - underscores one of the main Challenge outcomes: that of method complementarity. It is likely that the combination of methods in a so-called ensemble approach will be key to exploiting very large astronomical data sets.
galaxies: statistics
techniques: imaging spectroscopy
radio lines: galaxies
methods: data analysis
surveys
software: simulations
Author
Philippa Hartley
SKA Organisation
A. Bonaldi
SKA Organisation
University of Manchester
Robert Braun
SKA Organisation
J. N.H.S. Aditya
Shanghai Astronomical Observatory
S. Aicardi
Paris Observatory
L. Alegre
SKA Organisation
University of Edinburgh
A. Chakraborty
Indian Institute of Technology Indore
X. Chen
Chinese Academy of Sciences
S. Choudhuri
IIT Madras
Queen Mary University of London
A. O. Clarke
SKA Organisation
J. Coles
University of Cambridge
J. S. Collinson
SKA Organisation
D. Cornu
Paris Observatory
L. Darriba
Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA)
M. Delli Veneri
University of Naples Federico II
J. Forbrich
University of Hertfordshire
B. Fraga
Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas
A. Galan
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL)
J. Garrido
Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA)
F. Gubanov
Moscow State University
Henrik Håkansson
Fraunhofer-Chalmers Centre
M. J. Hardcastle
University of Hertfordshire
C. Heneka
University of Hamburg
D. Herranz
CSIC-UC - Instituto de Física de Cantabria (IFCA)
K. M. Hess
University of Groningen
Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON)
Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA)
M. Jagannath
PES University
Sumit Jaiswal
Shanghai Astronomical Observatory
R. J. Jurek
University of Queensland
D. Korber
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL)
S. Kitaeff
University of Western Australia
D. Kleiner
Istituto nazionale di astrofisica (INAF)
B. Q. Lao
Shanghai Astronomical Observatory
X. Lu
Paris Observatory
A. Mazumder
Indian Institute of Technology Indore
J. Moldon
Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA)
R. Mondal
Tel Aviv University
S. Ni
College of Sciences, Northeastern University
Magnus Önnheim
Fraunhofer-Chalmers Centre
M. Parra
Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA)
N. Patra
Indian Institute of Technology Indore
Raman Research Institute
A. Peel
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL)
P. Salomé
Paris Observatory
S. Sánchez-Expósito
Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA)
M. Sargent
University of Sussex
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL)
International Space Science Institute
B. Semelin
Paris Observatory
P. Serra
Istituto nazionale di astrofisica (INAF)
A. K. Shaw
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
A. X. Shen
Australian SKA Regional Centre (AusSRC)
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
Anders Sjöberg
Fraunhofer-Chalmers Centre
L. Smith
University of Cambridge
A. Soroka
Moscow State University
V. Stolyarov
Russian Academy of Sciences
University of Cambridge
E. Tolley
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL)
Maria Carmen Toribio Perez
Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Onsala Space Observatory
J. M. van der Hulst
University of Groningen
A. Vafaei Sadr
University of Geneva
L. Verdes-Montenegro
Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA)
T. Westmeier
University of Western Australia
K. Yu
Chinese Academy of Sciences
L. Yu
Chinese Academy of Sciences
L. Zhang
Peng Cheng Laboratory
Sun Yat-Sen University
X. Zhang
College of Sciences, Northeastern University
Y. Zhang
Shanghai Astronomical Observatory
Antxon Alberdi
Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA)
M. Ashdown
University of Cambridge
C. R. Bom
Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas
M. Brüggen
University of Hamburg
J. Cannon
Macalester College
R. Chen
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Françoise Combes
Collège de France
Paris Observatory
John Conway
Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Onsala Space Observatory
Frédéric Courbin
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL)
J. Ding
Sun Yat-Sen University
G. Fourestey
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL)
J. Freundlich
Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg
L. Gao
College of Sciences, Northeastern University
C. Gheller
Istituto nazionale di astrofisica (INAF)
Q. Guo
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Emil Gustavsson
Fraunhofer-Chalmers Centre
Mats Jirstrand
Fraunhofer-Chalmers Centre
M. G. Jones
University of Arizona
G. I.G. Józsa
South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO)
Peter Kamphuis
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
J.P.J.P. Kneib
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL)
Michael Lindqvist
Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Onsala Space Observatory
B. Liu
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Y. Liu
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Y. Mao
Tsinghua University
Antoine Marchal
Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics
I. Márquez
Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA)
A. Meshcheryakov
Russian Academy of Sciences
Michael Olberg
Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Onsala Space Observatory
N. Oozeer
South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO)
M. Pandey-Pommier
Laboratoire Univers et Particules de Montpellier
W. Pei
Chinese Academy of Sciences
B. Peng
Chinese Academy of Sciences
J. Sabater
University of Edinburgh
A. Sorgho
Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA)
J. L. Starck
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL)
C. Tasse
Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)
Rhodes University
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
0035-8711 (ISSN) 1365-2966 (eISSN)
Vol. 523 2 1967-1993Onsala space observatory infrastructure
Swedish Research Council (VR) (2017-00648), 2018-01-01 -- 2021-12-31.
Subject Categories
Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology
Computer Science
DOI
10.1093/mnras/stad1375