Gravitational-Wave Optical Counterpart Detection Methods for the TOROS Campaign During LVC O2 Observation Run

In this talk we will discuss the current status of optical transient (OT) detection on astronomical images taken by the TOROS Collaboration during the LVC Observation Run O2. We review several Difference Image Analysis methods and traditional Machine Learning techniques used to clean up recovered transient candidates, as well as new OT detection methods based on Convolutional Neural Networks and the use of raw pixels of the image.

The TOROS collaboration acknowledges support from Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnologia e Innovacion Productiva (MinCyT) and Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnologicas (CONICET) from Argentina, Grants from the National Science Foundation of the United States of America, NSF PHYS 1156600 and NSF HRD 1242090. B.S., M.J.D. and M.L.'s work was partially supported by the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas (CONICET, Argentina) and the Secretaria de Ciencia y Tecnologia de la Universidad Nacional de Cordoba (SeCyT-UNC, Argentina). M.B and M.D. acknowledge NSF support through Grant NSF- HRD 1242090.