Automatic Detection of Plateau Phases in Light Curves of Variable Stars

Abstract

Modern astronomical surveys produce millions of light curves of variable sources. These massive data sets challenge the community to create automatic light-curve processing methods for detection, classification, and characterization of variable stars. In this paper, we present a novel method for extracting the variable components of a light curve based on Otsu’s thresholding method. To validate the effectiveness of this method, we apply it to the light curves of detached eclipsing binaries and dwarf novae, sourced from Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment catalogs.