Echoes in the Noise: Posterior Samples of Faint Galaxy Surface Brightness Profiles with Score-Based Likelihoods and Priors

Abstract

Examining the detailed structure of galaxy populations provides valuable insights into their formation and evolution mechanisms. Significant barriers to such analysis are the non-trivial noise properties of real astronomical images and the point spread function (PSF) which blurs structure. Here we present a framework which combines recent advances in score-based likelihood characterization and diffusion model priors to perform a Bayesian analysis of image deconvolution. The method, when applied to minimally processed Hubble Space Telescope (HST) data, recovers structures which have otherwise only become visible in next-generation James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) imaging.

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Reproductions