AI software helps astronomers deblur galaxies snapped by Earth telescopes

An AI algorithm can help astronomers deblur images snapped by ground-based telescopes more accurately and more quickly than traditional methods, according to the latest research. A pair of researchers from Northwestern University and Tsinghua University combined image processing techniques and trained a neural network to clear …

[Korev]

Will they use Samsung phones?

[Wellyboot]

Artists are getting a change of career

Fanciful guessing of what something we can't actually see looks like, based on things the AI* seen before.

I await the first cleaned up image featuring a Klingon battle cruiser, because there are lots of those pics on the interweb already :)

*or ML

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Artists are getting a change of career

Why do all these spiral galaxies suddenly look like a copyright symbol?

Still better than the genuine intelligence that looked at 5 stars in a W and decided it was a Swan. Or the later genius that reckoned those 3stars formed a triangle

[jake]

Fortunately ...

... no actual observed data will be destroyed during the manufacturing of these new, pretty, shiny AI-generated cartoons.

_{And they are sure to produce the release of research funds from the 'orribly ignorant purse-string controllers.}

[Zack Mollusc]

A money saver!

Since the neural net will only produce something similar to what it is familiar with, you don't need the telescope at all.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: A money saver!

It's probably also produced material for a PhD thesis. Maybe a bit too specialised to write it.

[heyrick]

"the galaxy shapes estimated from our cleaned images are more accurate than those of other methods"

My emphasis. If I read this correctly, they are running a bunch of filters on the images in order to "correct" them into looking like what they think those objects are supposed to look like. The problem with this, of course, is that should they encounter a galaxy being torn apart by gravitational forces, the AI might be like "it's just atmospheric, let me fix that for you".

[jake]

"should they encounter a galaxy being torn apart by gravitational forces"

Or by entities unknown ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The AI algorithm is not being used to guess at the shape of the object. It is being used as a nonlinear stochastic deconvolution to remove atmospheric effects, which it can do better and faster than standard techniques once the upfront cost of training is paid.

[LionelB]

Have an upvote. I can only assume that (most of) the other commentators on here couldn't be bothered to read and/or understand the article.

[the spectacularly refined chap]

Their study has also been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

My favourite of all the academic journals, given that it is neither monthly, nor does it contain the notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Skip the blurry pixels

Have AI jump straight to the sci-fi "artist's rendition" that appears in headlines.

[elDog]

Give the AI model some psychedelics and let's see what ensues.

No need for telescopes or astronomers. Just lots of Starry Nights.

[Michael Hoffmann]

1. Find corresponding object in Hubble or Webb data

2. Use Microsoft Snip&Sketch

3. Copy paste, appropriately resized and oriented

4. Charge for "amazing AI"