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Main Authors: Zhu, Shiwei, Fang, Guanwen, Dai, Yao, Zhou, Chichun, Zheng, Yirui, Song, Jie, Lu, Shiying, Kong, Xu
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.15142
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author Zhu, Shiwei
Fang, Guanwen
Dai, Yao
Zhou, Chichun
Zheng, Yirui
Song, Jie
Lu, Shiying
Kong, Xu
author_facet Zhu, Shiwei
Fang, Guanwen
Dai, Yao
Zhou, Chichun
Zheng, Yirui
Song, Jie
Lu, Shiying
Kong, Xu
contents We conduct a systematic robustness analysis of the hybrid machine learning framework \texttt{USmorph}, which integrates unsupervised and supervised learning for galaxy morphological classification. Although \texttt{USmorph} has already been applied to nearly 100,000 $I$-band galaxy images in the COSMOS field ($0.2 < z < 1.2$, $I_{\mathrm{mag}} < 25$), the stability of its core modules has not been quantitatively assessed. Our tests show that the convolutional autoencoder (CAE) achieves the best performance in preserving structural information when adopting an intermediate network depth, $5\times5$ convolutional kernels, and a 40-dimensional latent representation. The adaptive polar coordinate transform (APCT) effectively enhances rotational invariance and improves the robustness of downstream tasks. In the unsupervised stage, a bagging clustering number of $K=50$ provides the optimal trade-off between classification granularity and labeling efficiency. For supervised learning, we employ GoogLeNet, which exhibits stable performance without overfitting. We validate the reliability of the final classifications through two independent tests: (1) the t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE) visualization reveals clear clustering boundaries in the low-dimensional space; and (2) the morphological classifications are consistent with theoretical expectations of galaxy evolution, with both true and false positives showing unbiased distributions in the parameter space. These results demonstrate the strong robustness of the \texttt{USmorph} algorithm, providing guidance for its future application to the China Space Station Telescope (CSST) mission.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_15142
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Robustness Analysis of USmorph: I. Generalization Efficiency of Unsupervised Strategies and Supervised Learning in Galaxy Morphological Classification
Zhu, Shiwei
Fang, Guanwen
Dai, Yao
Zhou, Chichun
Zheng, Yirui
Song, Jie
Lu, Shiying
Kong, Xu
Astrophysics of Galaxies
We conduct a systematic robustness analysis of the hybrid machine learning framework \texttt{USmorph}, which integrates unsupervised and supervised learning for galaxy morphological classification. Although \texttt{USmorph} has already been applied to nearly 100,000 $I$-band galaxy images in the COSMOS field ($0.2 < z < 1.2$, $I_{\mathrm{mag}} < 25$), the stability of its core modules has not been quantitatively assessed. Our tests show that the convolutional autoencoder (CAE) achieves the best performance in preserving structural information when adopting an intermediate network depth, $5\times5$ convolutional kernels, and a 40-dimensional latent representation. The adaptive polar coordinate transform (APCT) effectively enhances rotational invariance and improves the robustness of downstream tasks. In the unsupervised stage, a bagging clustering number of $K=50$ provides the optimal trade-off between classification granularity and labeling efficiency. For supervised learning, we employ GoogLeNet, which exhibits stable performance without overfitting. We validate the reliability of the final classifications through two independent tests: (1) the t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE) visualization reveals clear clustering boundaries in the low-dimensional space; and (2) the morphological classifications are consistent with theoretical expectations of galaxy evolution, with both true and false positives showing unbiased distributions in the parameter space. These results demonstrate the strong robustness of the \texttt{USmorph} algorithm, providing guidance for its future application to the China Space Station Telescope (CSST) mission.
title Robustness Analysis of USmorph: I. Generalization Efficiency of Unsupervised Strategies and Supervised Learning in Galaxy Morphological Classification
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.15142