Posted by Heba El-Sayed
Monday, February 13, 2023 11:00 PM
As machine learning methods become more sophisticated, they are being used more and more astronomy For challenging tasks such as spotting distant and dim galaxy clusters.
It can be very useful to have computers look at astronomical data to look for specific objects as they can process a huge amount of data – however there are some judgments that still require the human touch.
This week’s photo from Hubble Space TelescopeThe dwarf galaxy Donatiello II is very faint and hard to recognize from the background behind it, but an amateur astronomer was able to point it out, Digitartlends reported.
“Even the best algorithms have their limitations when it comes to distinguishing very faint galaxies from individual stars and background noise,” the Hubble scientists said. “In such challenging situations, identification has to be done the old-fashioned way — with specialized human trials through the data itself.”
The dwarf galaxy is in the center of this image and was identified by space observer Giuseppe Donatello from data collected during the Dark Energy Survey. It, along with two other similar dwarf galaxies called Donatello III and IV, orbit the Sculptor Galaxy.
Once Donatello spotted the trio in the Dark Energy Survey data, the researchers used Hubble to confirm the discovery and capture this image.
The Dark Energy Survey was a project that surveyed the skies from 2013 to 2019, looking at things like galaxy clusters to understand more about dark energy.
Although the survey is complete, the data collected from the first three years of observations was released to the public in 2021 and continues to lead to discoveries like this trio of dwarf galaxies.
