Computer Science Technique Helps Astronomers Explore the Universe

Google uses "deep learning" to generate captions for images, Facebook uses it to recognize faces and Tesla uses it to train self-driving cars. Now astronomers have caught on to deep learning, a form of machine learning in which a computer can be trained to identify or classify particular objects in images. The newest telescopes, such as the Dark Energy Survey, which uses a 4-meter telescope in northern Chile and covers about one quarter of the southern sky, take millions of images of a variety of celestial objects. These often include visual distortions, cosmic rays and satellite trails that make them difficult to interpret. Deep learning could help process this deluge of data quickly.