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Paper: Automating the Measurement of Surface Brightness Fluctuations
Volume: 525, Compendium of Undergraduate Research in Astronomy and Space Science
Page: 5
Authors: Davis, J.; Jensen, J. B.
Abstract: Surface Brightness Fluctuations is a technique that can be used to measure distances to galaxies using the fact that the discrete nature of stars in a galaxy leads to a spatial variance in surface brightness that varies according to the Poisson distribution. Upcoming surveys like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope are set to release data sets appropriate for SBF distance measurements for many thousands of galaxies. Current techniques used to create the smooth galaxy models needed to measure a galaxy's surface brightness fluctuations often need fine tuning by hand. In order to assist in automating the creation of a smooth model profile, we have implemented the 2D Savitzky-Golay filter in software and the proof of concept implementation is presented in this paper.
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