The Future of Data Science in Astronomy
Vibha Velmurugan
2/13/2023
The article was published on December 15, 2022 by Stuart Rauch
Summary of the Article
The more improvements we have in technology, the more astronomical data that is available to analyze. If we were to analyze this data by hand, it would take years to analyze it. This is where data science comes in. Due to the vast amounts of data we are obtaining, data science and machine learning are starting to play a role in astronomy research.
The article discusses three examples of this. The first example is the use of a neural network to analyze simulations of plasma turbulence from the sun. The second example is exoplanet data from the NASA Kepler space telescope. A multi-planet system of five planets was discovered completely by crowd sourced data analysis efforts. The third example is the future goal of examining samples of sands on Mars to look for past signs of life. The development of machine learning models are necessary to efficiently analyze this data.
My Favorite Use of Data Science in Astronomy
Out of the three uses of data science in astronomy discussed above, my favorite would have to be the exoplanet one. I think it is so cool that the exoplanet system was discovered by crowd sourcing efforts. Astronomy is something I am passionate about, so it brings me comfort knowing that I can make contributions to the field even if I don’t end up having an astronomy related career.
About Stuart Rauch
Stuart Rauch, the author of this article, is the president of ContentBox Marketing Inc., a marketing consultant company. According to his LinkedIn page, he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in marketing and spanish from the UC Berkeley.
Here is the link to his LinkedIn account
Why I Chose this Article
Last year, I randomly took an introductory astronomy course and discovered that I have a passion for astronomy. At that point it was too late to major in Astronomy. I was pursuing the data science minor beforehand, and I realized that the field of astronomy utilizes data science techniques due to the sheer amount of data that’s being collected. My best path into working in the astronomy field is to use my data science background. I wanted to learn more about the specific applications of data science in astronomy, and this article does that.