Bayesian Light Source Separator (BLISS)

BLISS is a Bayesian procedure for deblending light sources. BLISS provides:

• Accurate estimation of parameters in blended field.

• Calibrated uncertainties through fitting an approximate Bayesian posterior.

• Scalability of Bayesian inference to entire astronomical surveys.

BLISS uses state-of-the-art methods in variational inference including:

• Amortized inference, in which a neural network maps telescope images to an approximate Bayesian posterior on parameters of interest.

• Variational auto-encoders (VAEs) to fit a flexible model for galaxy morphology.

• Wake-sleep algorithm to jointly fit the approximate posterior and model parameters such as the PSF and the galaxy VAE.

Latest updates

Galaxies

• BLISS now includes a galaxy model based on a Variational AutoEncoder that was trained on CATSIM bulge+disk galaxies.

• We are working on testing galaxy detection functionality and developing galaxy shape measurement.

Stars

• BLISS already includes the StarNet functionality from its predecessor repo: DeblendingStarFields.

Table of Contents

• Installation Guide
• Bliss API
• Tutorials