This AI bot can spot galaxies in deep space

SYDNEY: A team of researchers have been taught an Artificial Intelligence (AI) program – that used to recognize faces on Facebook – to identify galaxies in deep space.

The AI ​​bot named "ClaRAN" scans images taken by radio telescopes. Its job is to spot radio galaxies – galaxies that emit powerful radio streams from supermbadive black holes at their centers.

Dr. Chen Wu and astronomer Dr Ivy Wong from the University of Western Australia, of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR).

Black holes are found at the center of most, if not all, galaxies.

"These supermbadive black holes occasionally burst out that can be seen with a telescope radio," said Dr. Wong.

"Over time, the jets can stretch their galaxies, making it difficult for traditional computer programs to figure out where they are." That's what we're trying to teach ClaRAN to do, "she added.

"ClaRAN", said Dr. Wu, adding that the program has been overhauled and trained to recognize galaxies instead of people.

ClaRAN is an open source and publicly available on Microsoft-owned GitHub.

Traditional computer algorithms are able to fully identify 90 percent of the sources.

"That still leaves 10 per cent, or seven million 'hard' galaxies that have to be eyeballed by a human due to the complexity of their extended structures," Dr. Wong said.

"If ClaRAN reduces the number of sources that require visualization of galaxies," she added in a paper published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

"ClaRAN" has huge implications for how telescope observations are processed.