An artificial intelligence (AI) system analyzing data from the Gaia space telescope has identified more than 2,000 large protostars, young stars that are still forming and could hold clues to the origin of the stars in our Milky Way.
Scientists had previously cataloged only 100 of these stars and investigating them has generated much of the knowledge underpinning star formation studies.
The project was led by Miguel Vioque, a PhD researcher at the University of Leeds, and the findings — New catalog of Herbig AE/BE and classical Be stars: A machine learning approach to Gaia DR2 — have been published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
He believes studying these newly identified stars has the potential to change scientists’ understanding of massive star formation and their approach to studying the galaxy.
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