Semantic search for 100M+ galaxy images using AI-generated captions
Researchers have developed a new AI-powered system called AION-Search to enable semantic searching of over 100 million galaxy images. The system uses Vision-Language Models to generate descriptive captions for unlabeled astronomical images. These captions are then used to train a foundation model, allowing for efficient and accurate searches of rare celestial phenomena, including the identification of 36 new extragalactic stellar stream candidates. AI
IMPACT Enables semantic search for large, unlabeled scientific image archives, expanding data exploration capabilities in fields like astronomy.