Intelligent Classification of Supernovae Using Artificial Neural Networks

Abstract

The classification of supernovae (explosions of certain stars) divides them into two main types, those of type I do not present Hydrogen in the spectrum while those of type II present. In addition to the division into these two types, there is still a subdivision that establishes types Ia, Ib and Ic. In practice, the classification of supernovae requires specialized knowledge of astronomers and data (light spectra) of good quality. Some automatic/intelligent classifiers have been developed and are reported in the literature, one of them is CIntIa, which uses 4 Artificial Neural Networks to classify supernovae types Ia, Ib, Ic and II. The objective of this work is to improve CIntIa, so that it has more diversity in its learning, proposing CIntIa 2.0. In this way, this work is a hierarchical learning structure that connects Artificial Neural Networks in an integrated system that allows a more secure and unambiguous classification. The computational improvement of this new version included the increased amount of data used at all stages of development of intelligent classifier and a new approach to filtering and processing of spectral data, ensuring better quality of information that are to be trained networks. The results achieved were good, especially in the classification of types Ia and II. A comparison with the works found in the
literature shows that CIntIa 2.0 is superior in quantity and diversity of data and achieves higher classification indices than the other classifiers.