ULISSE: Determination of star-formation rate and stellar mass based on the one-shot galaxy imaging technique

TL;DR

ULISSE is a fast, image-based method that estimates galaxy star-formation rates and stellar masses using similarity searches, reducing the need for extensive training and enabling rapid analysis of large survey data.

Contribution

This paper introduces ULISSE, a novel similarity-based approach that predicts galaxy physical parameters from single images without extensive neural network training.

Findings

Predicts SFR and stellar mass within 1 dex in 60-80% of cases

Performs better for star-forming and bright nucleus galaxies

Approximately doubles accuracy over random guessing

Abstract

Modern sky surveys produce vast amounts of observational data, making the application of classical methods for estimating galaxy properties challenging and time-consuming. This challenge can be significantly alleviated by employing automatic machine and deep learning techniques. We propose an implementation of the ULISSE algorithm aimed at determining physical parameters of galaxies, in particular star-formation rates (SFR) and stellar masses ($M_{\ast}$), using only composite-color images. ULISSE is able to rapidly and efficiently identify candidates from a single image based on photometric and morphological similarities to a given reference object with known properties. This approach leverages features extracted from the ImageNet dataset to perform similarity searches among all objects in the sample, eliminating the need for extensive neural network training. Our experiments, performed on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, demonstrate that we are able to predict the joint star formation rate and stellar mass of the target galaxies within 1 dex in 60% to 80% of cases, depending on the investigated subsample (quiescent/star-forming galaxies, early-/late-type, etc.), and within 0.5 dex if we consider these parameters separately. This is approximately twice the fraction obtained from a random guess extracted from the parent population. Additionally, we find ULISSE is more effective for galaxies with active star formation compared to elliptical galaxies with quenched star formation. Additionally, ULISSE performs more efficiently for galaxies with bright nuclei such as AGN. Our results suggest that ULISSE is a promising tool for a preliminary estimation of star-formation rates and stellar masses for galaxies based only on single images in current and future wide-field surveys (e.g., Euclid, LSST), which target millions of sources nightly.