February's Science Topic - Binary Stars and Artificial Intelligence
Binary stars are famously hard to distinguish from single stars using normal telescopes. One of the most conventional methods is to manually look at how their light behaves and which colors it emits. While manual methods are extremely reliable, detecting binaries this way is very time consuming. Using machine learning, we have built a digital “brain” that looks at this light behavior and tries to classify star systems. We will show how this system works and how we applied it to realistic systems to gain insights on stellar bodies.
Speakers: Rania Alafogianni (She/Her), Bart Devogel (He/Any), Akhila Thamaravelil Abhimanue Achary (She/Her) from KU Leuven
Akhila, Bart and Rania are three astronomy masters/graduate students from KU Leuven. Rania has had a long held interest in binary stars, Bart likes applying modern computational methods to astronomical issues, and Akhila has strong background theoretical physics and is interested in Astrobiology and Exoplanets.
Free Admission, donations welcome
If you can't attend in person, hear the talk live on Zoom: Register here for Zoom