Seeing the universe through new lenses

Like crystal balls for the universe’s deeper mysteries, galaxies and other massive space objects can serve as lenses to more distant objects and phenomena along the same path, bending light in revelatory ways.

more…

Tau.Neutrino said:

Seeing the universe through new lenses

Like crystal balls for the universe’s deeper mysteries, galaxies and other massive space objects can serve as lenses to more distant objects and phenomena along the same path, bending light in revelatory ways.

more…

> The major limitation of strong gravitational lenses has been their scarcity, with only several hundred confirmed since the first observation in 1979

I’m shocked. I’d thought they were very common. But thinking back, I’ve only seen images of 20 or so. APOD has had 14.

> an estimated 1 in 10,000 galaxies acts as a lens

If there are two trillion galaxies in the universe, that’s a lot of lenses. But they probably mean galaxies observed by DESI, which would be a lot less. There are 35 million galaxies observed by DESI, making an estimated 3,500 lenses.

> A new study by an international team of scientists revealed 335 new strong lensing candidates based on a deep dive into data collected for a U.S. Department of Energy-supported telescope project in Arizona called the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI).

Looks like I need to look into DESI a bit more.

> The study, published May 7 in The Astrophysical Journal, benefited from the winning machine-learning algorithm in an international science competition.

News to me.

> Hubble Space Telescope, with observing time on the Hubble that began in late 2019.

Still giving great results. In this case confirming and imaging the gravitational lenses.

> neural network, which is a form of artificial intelligence in which the computer program is trained to gradually improve its image-matching over time to provide an increasing success rate in identifying lenses. It takes hours to train the neural network

Yuk. Human intelligence outperforms artificial intelligence.

> A team based in Australia, for example, also found many new lensing candidates using a different approach.

Yep. Human intelligence.

DESI left vs Hubble right. Good old Hubble, still the best.

mollwollfumble said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Seeing the universe through new lenses

Like crystal balls for the universe’s deeper mysteries, galaxies and other massive space objects can serve as lenses to more distant objects and phenomena along the same path, bending light in revelatory ways.

more…

> The major limitation of strong gravitational lenses has been their scarcity, with only several hundred confirmed since the first observation in 1979

I’m shocked. I’d thought they were very common. But thinking back, I’ve only seen images of 20 or so. APOD has had 14.

> an estimated 1 in 10,000 galaxies acts as a lens

If there are two trillion galaxies in the universe, that’s a lot of lenses. But they probably mean galaxies observed by DESI, which would be a lot less. There are 35 million galaxies observed by DESI, making an estimated 3,500 lenses.

> A new study by an international team of scientists revealed 335 new strong lensing candidates based on a deep dive into data collected for a U.S. Department of Energy-supported telescope project in Arizona called the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI).

Looks like I need to look into DESI a bit more.

> The study, published May 7 in The Astrophysical Journal, benefited from the winning machine-learning algorithm in an international science competition.

News to me.

> Hubble Space Telescope, with observing time on the Hubble that began in late 2019.

Still giving great results. In this case confirming and imaging the gravitational lenses.

> neural network, which is a form of artificial intelligence in which the computer program is trained to gradually improve its image-matching over time to provide an increasing success rate in identifying lenses. It takes hours to train the neural network

Yuk. Human intelligence outperforms artificial intelligence.

> A team based in Australia, for example, also found many new lensing candidates using a different approach.

Yep. Human intelligence.

DESI left vs Hubble right. Good old Hubble, still the best.

Cusp used to work on gravitational lensing, may still do.

sibeen said:

mollwollfumble said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Seeing the universe through new lenses

Like crystal balls for the universe’s deeper mysteries, galaxies and other massive space objects can serve as lenses to more distant objects and phenomena along the same path, bending light in revelatory ways.

more…

> The major limitation of strong gravitational lenses has been their scarcity, with only several hundred confirmed since the first observation in 1979

I’m shocked. I’d thought they were very common. But thinking back, I’ve only seen images of 20 or so. APOD has had 14.

> an estimated 1 in 10,000 galaxies acts as a lens

If there are two trillion galaxies in the universe, that’s a lot of lenses. But they probably mean galaxies observed by DESI, which would be a lot less. There are 35 million galaxies observed by DESI, making an estimated 3,500 lenses.

> A new study by an international team of scientists revealed 335 new strong lensing candidates based on a deep dive into data collected for a U.S. Department of Energy-supported telescope project in Arizona called the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI).

Looks like I need to look into DESI a bit more.

> The study, published May 7 in The Astrophysical Journal, benefited from the winning machine-learning algorithm in an international science competition.

News to me.

> Hubble Space Telescope, with observing time on the Hubble that began in late 2019.

Still giving great results. In this case confirming and imaging the gravitational lenses.

> neural network, which is a form of artificial intelligence in which the computer program is trained to gradually improve its image-matching over time to provide an increasing success rate in identifying lenses. It takes hours to train the neural network

Yuk. Human intelligence outperforms artificial intelligence.

> A team based in Australia, for example, also found many new lensing candidates using a different approach.

Yep. Human intelligence.

DESI left vs Hubble right. Good old Hubble, still the best.

Cusp used to work on gravitational lensing, may still do.

Not to forget his evil one-time student Brendan.

Cutting me off