J/A+A/704/A227 Catalogue of identified astrophysical anomalies (O'Ryan+, 2025)
Identifying astrophysical anomalies in 99.6 million source cutouts from the
Hubble legacy archive using AnomalyMatch.
O'Ryan D., Gomez P.
<Astron. Astrophys. 704, A227 (2025)>
=2025A&A...704A.227O 2025A&A...704A.227O (SIMBAD/NED BibCode)
ADC_Keywords: Galaxies ; Surveys ; Optical
Keywords: methods: data analysis - catalogs - galaxies: general -
galaxies: interactions - galaxies: peculiar
Abstract:
Astronomical archives contain vast quantities of unexplored data that
potentially harbour rare and scientifically valuable cosmic phenomena.
We leverage new semi-supervised methods to extract such objects from
the Hubble Legacy Archive.
We have systematically searched approximately 100 million image
cutouts from the entire Hubble Legacy Archive using the recently
developed AnomalyMatch method, which combines semi-supervised and
active learning techniques for the efficient detection of
astrophysical anomalies. This comprehensive search rapidly uncovered a
multitude of astrophysical anomalies presented here that significantly
expand the inventory of known rare objects.
Among our discoveries are 86 new candidate gravitational lenses, 18
jellyfish galaxies, and 417 mergers or interacting galaxies. The
efficiency and accuracy of our iterative detection strategy allows us
to trawl the complete archive within just 2-3 days, highlighting its
potential for large-scale astronomical surveys. We present a detailed
overview of these newly identified objects, discuss their
astrophysical significance, and demonstrate the considerable potential
of AnomalyMatch to efficiently explore extensive astronomical
datasets, including, for example, the upcoming Euclid data releases.
Description:
The construction of this catalogue is based on F814W data from the
Hubble Space Telescope. ∼100 million source cutouts were created
across all final product, science ready (level 3) mosaics in the high
level science product dataset of the Hubble legacy archive. The source
catalogue used here was the Hubble source catalogue (HSC; Whitemore et
al., 2016AJ....151..134W 2016AJ....151..134W, Cat. II/342). While these source images were
created to search for mergers and interacting galaxies in O'Ryan et
al. (2023ApJ...948...40O 2023ApJ...948...40O, Cat. J/ApJ/948/40), we have reused this
dataset to search for anomalies.
Table 2 contains the coordinates (RA and Dec) and candidate
classifications of all anomalies found in this work. We also state if
they exist in the literature. The Source IDs correspond to the Source
IDs from the Hubble Source Catalogue (Whitemore et al.,
2016AJ....151..134W 2016AJ....151..134W, Cat. II/342) which were also used in O'Ryan et
al. (2023ApJ...948...40O 2023ApJ...948...40O, Cat. J/ApJ/948/40).
File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
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ReadMe 80 . This file
table2.dat 89 1176 Catalogue of anomalies
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See also:
II/342 : Hubble Source Catalog (V1 and V2) (Whitmore+, 2016)
J/ApJ/948/40 : Interacting galaxies from HST archives (O'Ryan+, 2023)
Byte-by-byte Description of file: table2.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 13 I13 --- SourceID SourceID from Hubble source catalogue
15- 41 A27 --- Class Classification of anomaly
43- 62 F20.16 deg RAdeg Right ascension (J2000) of anomaly
64- 83 F20.16 deg DEdeg Declination (J2000) of anomaly
85- 89 A5 --- Referenced [False True] If anomaly is already present
in literature
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Acknowledgements:
David O'Ryan, david.oryan(at)esa.int
(End) Patricia Vannier [CDS] 14-Nov-2025