Introducing SESHAT: A Tool for Object Classification from JWST Catalogs

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Crompvoets, B. L., Kirk, H., Gutermuth, R., Di Francesco, J.
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Crompvoets, B. L.
Kirk, H.
Gutermuth, R.
Di Francesco, J.
author_facet Crompvoets, B. L.
Kirk, H.
Gutermuth, R.
Di Francesco, J.
contents JWST's exquisite data have opened the doors to new possibilities in detecting broad classes of astronomical objects, but also to new challenges in classifying those objects. In this work, we introduce SESHAT, the Stellar Evolutionary Stage Heuristic Assessment Tool for the identification of Young Stellar Objects, field stars (main sequence through asymptotic giant branch), brown dwarfs, white dwarfs, and galaxies, from any JWST photometry. This identification is done using the machine learning method XGBoost to analyze thousands of rows of synthetic photometry, modified at run-time to match the filters available in the data to be classified. We validate this tool on real data of both star-forming regions and cosmological fields, and find we are able to reproduce the observed classes of objects to a minimum of 85\% recall across every class, with all available data, without additional information on the ellipticity or spatial distribution of the objects. Furthermore, this tool can be used to test the filter choices for JWST proposals by verifying whether the chosen filters are sufficient to identify the desired class of objects. SESHAT is released as a Python package to the community for general use.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_07747
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Introducing SESHAT: A Tool for Object Classification from JWST Catalogs
Crompvoets, B. L.
Kirk, H.
Gutermuth, R.
Di Francesco, J.
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
JWST's exquisite data have opened the doors to new possibilities in detecting broad classes of astronomical objects, but also to new challenges in classifying those objects. In this work, we introduce SESHAT, the Stellar Evolutionary Stage Heuristic Assessment Tool for the identification of Young Stellar Objects, field stars (main sequence through asymptotic giant branch), brown dwarfs, white dwarfs, and galaxies, from any JWST photometry. This identification is done using the machine learning method XGBoost to analyze thousands of rows of synthetic photometry, modified at run-time to match the filters available in the data to be classified. We validate this tool on real data of both star-forming regions and cosmological fields, and find we are able to reproduce the observed classes of objects to a minimum of 85\% recall across every class, with all available data, without additional information on the ellipticity or spatial distribution of the objects. Furthermore, this tool can be used to test the filter choices for JWST proposals by verifying whether the chosen filters are sufficient to identify the desired class of objects. SESHAT is released as a Python package to the community for general use.
title Introducing SESHAT: A Tool for Object Classification from JWST Catalogs
topic Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.07747