Astronomers have designed and trained a computer program which can classify tens of thousands of galaxies in just a few seconds, a task that usually t

Thousands of galaxies classified in a blink of an eye

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2021-07-14 22:00:09

Astronomers have designed and trained a computer program which can classify tens of thousands of galaxies in just a few seconds, a task that usually takes months to accomplish.

In research published today, astrophysicists from Australia have used machine learning to speed up a process that is often done manually by astronomers and citizen scientists around the world.

“Galaxies come in different shapes and sizes” said lead author Mitchell Cavanagh, a PhD candidate based at The University of Western Australia node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR).

“Classifying the shapes of galaxies is an important step in understanding their formation and evolution, and can even shed light on the nature of the Universe itself.”

Different shapes of galaxies, left to right: elliptical, lenticular, spiral, and irregular/miscellaneous. Credit: NASA/Hubble (elliptical galaxy M87), ESA/Hubble & NASA (lenticular galaxy NGC 6861 and the colliding Antennae galaxies), and David Dayag (the Andromeda spiral galaxy).