The DOI matches its Crossref record.
A prescription for period analysis of unevenly sampled time series
Abstract
A technique is presented for detecting the presence and significance of a period in unequally sampled time series data. The calculation of the modified periodogram for unevenly sampled data is reviewed. The proper definition of the variance that is used to normalize the power of the modified periodogram is clarified. It is proven that the probability that a peak in the periodogram is noise or signal can be easily assessed by the method given here only when the total variance of the data is used to normalize the periodogram power. The crucial choice of independent frequencies in calculating both the periodogram and the false alarm probability from unevenly sampled data is discussed. An empirical formula for estimating the number of independent frequencies is derived. In addition, the formula for the uncertainty of a frequency identified in the periodogram is reviewed. A method for detecting the presence of an alias frequency caused by the interaction of the window and signal is prescribed. With some examples of periodic signals, the minimum number of points required to measure reliably a signal are shown. The signal-to-noise ratio and the number of points required to extract signals when one or two periodicities are present in the time series are investigated.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cited by
Cumming, A., Butler, R. P., Marcy, G. W., Vogt, S. S., Wright, J. T., & Fischer, D. A. (2008) · Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific · doi:10.1086/588487 · Cited by 892
MODELING THE TIME VARIABILITY OF SDSS STRIPE 82 QUASARS AS A DAMPED RANDOM WALK
MacLeod, C. L., Ivezić, Ž., Kochanek, C. S., Kozłowski, S., Kelly, B., Bullock, E., Kimball, A., Sesar, B., Westman, D., Brooks, K., et al. (2010) · The Astrophysical Journal · doi:10.1088/0004-637x/721/2/1014 · Cited by 700
Assessing the statistical significance of periodogram peaks
Baluev, R. V. (2008) · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2008.12689.x · Cited by 384
Rosenthal, L. J., Fulton, B. J., Hirsch, L. A., Isaacson, H. T., Howard, A. W., Dedrick, C. M., Sherstyuk, I. A., Blunt, S. C., Petigura, E. A., Knutson, H. A., et al. (2021) · The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series · doi:10.3847/1538-4365/abe23c · Cited by 341
Detection Limits from the McDonald Observatory Planet Search Program
Wittenmyer, R. A., Endl, M., Cochran, W. D., Hatzes, A. P., Walker, G. A. H., Yang, S. L. S., & Paulson, D. B. (2006) · The Astronomical Journal · doi:10.1086/504942 · Cited by 287
Metadata
- Authors
- Horne, J. H., & Baliunas, S. L.
- Venue
- The Astrophysical Journal
- Publisher
- American Astronomical Society
- Published
- 1986-03
- Volume
- 302
- Pages
- 757
- ISSN
- 0004-637X (ISSN-L)
- 1538-4357
- OpenAlex
- W2067366609
- Cited by
- 1,446
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 6.51
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: A prescription for period analysis of unevenly sampled time series. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/164037
- The paper
- Horne, J. H., & Baliunas, S. L. (1986). A prescription for period analysis of unevenly sampled time series. The Astrophysical Journal. https://doi.org/10.1086/164037
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
