Thanks to smart telescopes and artificial intelligence, it has become much easier to take up astronomy or astrophotography as a hobby.
In the past, stargazing required a great deal of time and patience because telescopes had to be carefully adjusted and the desired objects located in the sky. The optics also had to be moved during long-term observations to keep the image in focus. Now, however, thanks to smart devices and solutions, even first-time explorers can enjoy amazing views right from the outset.
In this post, we will introduce you to the latest technical solutions that offer innovative and convenient possibilities. We will also take a brief look at an exciting experiment that could simplify the lives of professional astronomers and accelerate the development of this field of science.
Automatic Detection of Celestial Bodies
Conventional telescopes require precise calibration and an understanding of celestial coordinates. However, AI-based smart telescopes simplify the entire process. Simply select the planet, galaxy, nebula or other celestial body you wish to observe, and the telescope will locate it in the night sky and remain aligned with it throughout your viewing session.
AI solutions can also recommend the best viewing times based on your location and the local weather forecast, thereby improving the user experience.
Controlling the Telescope via Smartphone
Thanks to integration with mobile apps, you can now give commands to some telescopes directly from your smartphone, making the devices even more convenient to use. Certain models also understand voice commands.
Assistant in Astrophotography
Deep-sky astrophotography requires long exposure times and precise image stitching. Machine learning algorithms can analyse thousands of frames in seconds. Even when photographing faint celestial objects, the system selects the highest-quality images and combines them to produce the sharpest, most detailed photos possible.
AI tools also help to correct colours and adjust contrast, enabling you to take high-resolution images of distant galaxies without having to edit the photos extensively by hand.
It is also easier to photograph the northern lights. AI helps the camera to automatically adjust in order to capture the vivid colours and dynamic movements of light beams, eliminating the need for manual intervention.
Predicting Space Weather
Artificial intelligence is also very helpful in determining space weather conditions. For instance, it can predict solar flares more accurately than traditional methods, and these flares can disrupt satellite systems and power grids on Earth. However, by analysing this information, it is possible to avoid major disruptions.
Exploring New Celestial Bodies and Cosmic Events
Traditionally, the discovery of planets outside the Solar System involved manually analysing telescope data. However, new equipment and artificial intelligence are now taking over much of this task by scanning data sets, organising and processing the data, and interpreting it to find patterns that indicate the movement of possible planets or other rare cosmic events.
AI has, for example, been instrumental in detecting fast radio bursts and supernovae, which were previously difficult to detect due to their unpredictable nature.
An Experiment by Oxford University Demonstrates the Incredible Potential of AI
Nature Astronomy magazine recently reported on a study conducted by Oxford and Radboud universities and Google Cloud showing that general-purpose artificial intelligence can accurately identify and classify changes in the night sky based on just a few examples.
The experiment used the widely available Google Gemini large language model and gave it just 15 examples for each three main automated observation systems to learn from. Each example included a small image of the observed phenomenon, a reference image of the same area of the sky and an image highlighting the 'difference' that caused the change, alongside a brief expert-written note. Using these few examples and brief instructions, the model classified thousands of new alerts, adding a label to each one to indicate whether it was a real or false alert, and the priority of the detected event. The AI also generated a brief explanation for each decision it made.
In this way, Gemini learned to distinguish real cosmic events from apparent events captured in images with approximately 93% accuracy. This suggests that, in the future, researchers may no longer need to manually process large amounts of data, but can instead focus on pre-selected cases, saving time and speeding up research.
Hence, artificial intelligence and smart telescopes are improving the capabilities of both amateur and professional astronomers, making stargazing more efficient, accurate, and enjoyable.
If you want to try out these new possibilities for yourself, choose a smart telescope that suits you from our selection: https://www.teleskoobid.ee/en/smart-telescopes.
