Big universe, big data: machine learning and image analysis for astronomy

Jan Kremer, Kristoffer Stensbo-Smidt, Fabian Cristian Gieseke, Kim Steenstrup Pedersen, Christian Igel

26 Citations (Scopus)
93 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Astrophysics and cosmology are rich with data. The advent of wide-area digital cameras on large aperture telescopes has led to ever more ambitious surveys of the sky. Data volumes of entire surveys a decade ago can now be acquired in a single night, and real-time analysis is often desired. Thus, modern astronomy requires big data know-how, in particular, highly efficient machine learning and image analysis algorithms. But scalability isn't the only challenge: astronomy applications touch several current machine learning research questions, such as learning from biased data and dealing with label and measurement noise. The authors argue that this makes astronomy a great domain for computer science research, as it pushes the boundaries of data analysis. They focus here on exemplary results, discuss main challenges, and highlight some recent methodological advancements in machine learning and image analysis triggered by astronomical applications.

Original languageEnglish
JournalIEEE Intelligent Systems
Volume32
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)16-22
Number of pages7
ISSN1541-1672
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Mar 2017

Keywords

  • Faculty of Science
  • Big Data
  • Astronomy
  • Machine Learning
  • Computer Vision

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