Machine learning helps pick out stars in a crowd
Indian Astronomers have developed a new method based on Machine Learning that can identify cluster stars– assembly of stars physically related through common origin, with much greater certainty. The method can be used on clusters of all ages, distances, and densities. The method has been used to identify hundreds of additional stars for six different clusters up to 18000 light-years away and uncover peculiar stars.
Studying stars and how they evolve is the cornerstone of astronomy. But understanding them is difficult since they are observed at different ages. A star cluster is, therefore, a great place to study stars. All stars in a star cluster have approximately the same age and chemistry, so any differences seen can be attributed to the peculiarities in individual stars with certainty. As the clusters are part of the Milky Way, there are many stars between us and the cluster, so it isn’t easy to identify and select the stars of a particular cluster.