UQ-BoSE: uncertainty quantification on the boundaries of segmented events
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Wang, Jue
Kashyap, Vinay L
Lee, Thomas CM
van Dyk, David
Zezas, Andreas
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
We present a new method to estimate the boundary of extended sources in high-energy photon lists and to quantify the uncertainty in the boundary. This method extends the graphed seeded region growing method developed by M. Fan et al. Here, we describe how an unambiguous boundary of a centrally concentrated astronomical source may be defined by first spatially segmenting the photon list, then forcibly merging the segments until only two segments—an extended source and its background—remain, and finally constructing a boundary as the connected outer edges of the Voronoi tessellation of the photons included in the source segment. The resulting boundary is then modeled using Fourier descriptors to generate a smooth curve, and this curve is bootstrapped to generate uncertainties. We apply the method to photon event lists obtained during the observations of galaxies NGC 2300 and Arp 299. We demonstrate how the derived extent and enclosed flux of NGC 2300 obtained with Chandra and XMM-Newton are comparable. We also show how complex internal structure, as in the case of Arp 299, may be subsumed to construct a compact boundary of the object.
Date Issued
2025-05-22
Date Acceptance
2025-03-27
Citation
The Astronomical Journal, 2025, 169 (6)
ISSN
0004-6256
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Journal / Book Title
The Astronomical Journal
Volume
169
Issue
6
Copyright Statement
© 2025. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
License URL
Identifier
10.3847/1538-3881/adc931
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
ARTN 3269