An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics

An algorithm for detecting and characterizing periodic signals in unevenly-sampled data.

The Lomb-Scargle periodogram has a particularly wide use within the astronomy community. This method allows efficient computation of a Fourier-like → power spectrum estimator from such unevenly-sampled data, resulting in an intuitive means of determining the period of oscillation (see VanderPlas, 2017, astro-ph/1703.09824 and references therein).

See also: Named after Lomb, N. R. 1976, Ap&SS 39, 447 and Scargle, J. D. 1982, ApJ 263, 835; → periodogram.