The first images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are set to be released on 12 July, and it is expected that AI will play a key role in analysing the received data.

A successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, it is the largest and most powerful space observatory ever built and is set to give scientists a new eye on the cosmos.

Scientists are working on machine learning models to help analyse the vast amounts of data and help classify them quickly for researchers.

One of those scientists is UC Santa Cruz Astronomy and Astrophysics Prof Brant Robertson who helped develop Morpheus. This is a machine learning model that generates pixel-level morphological classifications of astronomical sources. Tech giant Nvidia said that its GPUs will help accelerate Morpheus across multiple platforms.

“What’s great about AI and machine learning is that you can train a model to actually make those decisions for you in a way that is less hands-on and more based on a set of metrics that you define,” Robertson said.

Morpheus was used to help classify images for the Hubble Space Telescope. With a growing team and advancements in machine learning, Robertson said the AI model will be used for “all of major extragalactic JWST surveys” conducted in its first year.

The COSMOS-Webb project

Robertson and a team of nearly 50 researchers will be using the AI model as part of the COSMOS-Webb project. This is an ambitious plan to use JWST to map the earliest structures in the universe.  The telescope will survey a large patch of the sky with its near-infrared and mid-infrared cameras, with more than 200 hours of observing time.

As part of the project, the researchers plan to survey half a million galaxies with multiband, high-resolution, near-infrared imaging, along with 32,000 galaxies in mid-infrared imaging.

“The COSMOS-Webb project is the largest contiguous area survey that will be executed with JWST for the foreseeable future,” Robertson said.

The COSMOS-Webb project aims to build on earlier discoveries to advance our knowledge in certain areas of study, such as learning how dark matter evolved over time and looking for early, fully evolved galaxies.

“The JWST will really enable us to see the universe in a new way that we’ve never seen before,” Robertson said. “So it’s really exciting.”

10 things you need to know direct to your inbox every weekday. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of essential sci-tech news.

The post How AI will help analyse the first James Webb Space Telescope images appeared first on Silicon Republic.