From text mining to astronomical sources distance estimation on Galaxy
Estimating redshifts of optical counter parts of sources detected in astronomy texts with a Galaxy Workflow
The WP5 EPFL team is excited to share a new Galaxy workflow that facilitates follow-up analysis of astronomical transient events mentioned in bulletins such as ATels or GCN Circulars.
The workflow begins with a text mining step using a public Galaxy tool that extracts coordinates of the mentioned astrophysical sources and outputs them in a FITS file (i.e. a standard way to store data in astronomy). Next, the FITS file is converted into more accessible CSV using an astropy based tool, making the data easier to explore and manipulate in Galaxy’s interface.
The resulting source table is then split into individual sources, and for each source, a cone search is performed using the DESI Legacy Survey. This fetches all nearby optical candidates in the Legacy Survey catalog.
Finally, a photometric redshift estimation step is carried out for each candidate using a Phosphoros-based tool (currently in staging) deployed on a local Galaxy instance. This allows researchers to assess the distances of candidate counterparts to observed transient sources.
The full workflow is publicly available on:
This workflow represents a step toward reproducible, automated follow-up analysis of transient events in astronomy.