Artificial intelligence program trained to recognise galaxies

This artificial intelligence program, named ClaRAN, has the ability to scan images taken by radio telescopes. With the responsibility to identify radio galaxies, galaxies that emit powerful radio jets from supermassive black holes at their centres, ClaRAN is the brainchild of big data specialist Dr Chen Wu and astronomer Dr Ivy Wong, both from The University of Western Australia in partnership with the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR). Wong explains: "These supermassive black holes occasionally burp out jets that can be seen with a radio telescope." "Over time, the jets can stretch a long way from their host galaxies, making it difficult for traditional computer programs to figure out where the galaxy is." "That's what we're trying to teach ClaRAN to do." Describing the origin of the artificial intelligence program, Dr Wu discusses how ClaRAN grew out of an open source version of Microsoft and Facebook's object detection software. The program was completely overhauled and trained to recognise galaxies instead of people.