Archival Legacy Investigations of Circumstellar Environments (ALICE): Statistical assessment of point source detections

TL;DR

The ALICE program re-analyzes archival HST-NICMOS data to identify and evaluate potential circumstellar environment detections around 400 stars, using advanced post-processing and statistical methods.

Contribution

This study introduces a new strategy for detection and candidate evaluation in archival data, enhancing the reliability of circumstellar environment studies.

Findings

Preliminary detections identified around multiple stars.

Statistical confidence levels established for detection validation.

Assessment of search completeness and detection reliability.

Abstract

The ALICE program, for Archival Legacy Investigation of Circumstellar Environment, is currently conducting a virtual survey of about 400 stars, by re-analyzing the HST-NICMOS coronagraphic archive with advanced post-processing techniques. We present here the strategy that we adopted to identify detections and potential candidates for follow-up observations, and we give a preliminary overview of our detections. We present a statistical analysis conducted to evaluate the confidence level on these detection and the completeness of our candidate search.