Automatic detection of plateau phases in light curves of variable stars

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new automatic method using Otsu's thresholding to detect variable components in light curves of stars, aiding large-scale astronomical data analysis.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel automatic technique for extracting variable components in light curves, validated on OGLE catalog data of eclipsing binaries and dwarf novae.

Findings

Effective detection of variable components demonstrated

Applicable to large astronomical survey data

Improves automation in variable star analysis

Abstract

Modern astronomical surveys produce millions of light curves of variable sources. These massive data sets challenge the community to create automatic light-curve processing methods for detection, classification, and characterisation of variable stars. In this paper, we present a novel method for extracting the variable components of a light curve based on Otsu's thresholding method. To validate the effectiveness of this method, we apply it to the light curves of detached eclipsing binaries and dwarf novae, sourced from OGLE catalogues.