astrophot: fitting everything everywhere all at once in astronomical images

• Published in: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Vol. 525; no. 4; pp. 6377 - 6393
• Main Authors: Stone, Connor J, Courteau, Stéphane, Cuillandre, Jean-Charles, Hezaveh, Yashar, Perreault-Levasseur, Laurence, Arora, Nikhil
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Oxford University Press 01.11.2023
• Subjects: Algorithms; Astronomical models; Celestial bodies; Central processing units; Covariance; CPUs; Galaxies; Graphics processing units; Machine learning; Markov chains; Optimization; Parameters; Point spread functions; Python; Source code; software: data analysis; stars: imaging; galaxies: general; techniques: image processing; techniques: photometric; galaxies: photometry
• ISSN: 0035-8711; 1365-2966
• DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stad2477

ABSTRACT We present astrophot, a fast, powerful, and user-friendly python based astronomical image photometry solver. astrophot incorporates automatic differentiation and graphics processing unit (GPU), or parallel central processing unit (CPU), acceleration, powered by the machine learning library pytorch. Everything: astrophot can fit models for sky, stars, galaxies, point spread functions (PSFs), and more in a principled χ2 forward optimization, recovering Bayesian posterior information and covariance of all parameters. Everywhere: astrophot can optimize forward models on CPU or GPU; across images that are large, multiband, multi-epoch, rotated, dithered, and more. All at once: The models are optimized together, thus handling overlapping objects and including the covariance between parameters (including PSF and galaxy parameters). A number of optimization algorithms are available including Levenberg–Marquardt, Gradient descent, and No-U-Turn Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling. With an object-oriented user interface, astrophot makes it easy to quickly extract detailed information from complex astronomical data for individual images or large survey programs. This paper outlines novel features of the astrophot code and compares it to other popular astronomical image modelling software. astrophot is open-source, fully python based, and freely accessible at https://github.com/Autostronomy/AstroPhot .