Morphology-assisted galaxy mass-to-light predictions using deep learning
  One of the most important properties of a galaxy is the total stellar mass,
or equivalently the stellar mass-to-light ratio (M/L). It is not directly
observable, but can be estimated from stellar population synthesis. Currently,
a galaxy's M/L is typically estimated from global fluxes. For example, a single
global g - i colour correlates well with the stellar M/L. Spectral energy
distribution (SED) fitting can make use of all available fluxes and their
errors to make a Bayesian estimate of the M/L. We want to investigate the
possibility of using morphology information to assist predictions of M/L. Our
first goal is to develop and train a method that only requires a g-band image
and redshift as input. This will allows us to study the correlation between M/L
and morphology. Next, we can also include the i-band flux, and determine if
morphology provides additional constraints compared to a method that only uses
g- and i-band fluxes. We used a machine learning pipeline that can be split in
two steps. First, we detected morphology features with a convolutional neural
network. These are then combined with redshift, pixel size and g-band
luminosity features in a gradient boosting machine. Our training target was the
M/L acquired from the GALEX-SDSS-WISE Legacy Catalog, which uses global SED
fitting and contains galaxies with z ~ 0.1. Morphology is a useful attribute
when no colour information is available, but can not outperform colour methods
on its own. When we combine the morphology features with global g- and i-band
luminosities, we find an improved estimate compared to a model which does not
make use of morphology. While our method was trained to reproduce global SED
fitted M/L, galaxy morphology gives us an important additional constraint when
using one or two bands. Our framework can be extended to other problems to make
use of morphological information.
