Machine learning helps SA-led team 'see unexplained astronomical object' - South African Radio Astronomy Observatory

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Machine learning is helping a team of South African, US and Australian scientists better understand a rare “unexplained astronomical object” observed in space.

Scientists are still working out what a newly discovered class of radio sources, known as Odd Radio Circles (ORC), are and how they originated.

The team was led by Michelle Lochner, who holds a joint position at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (Sarao).

They combed through data generated in the MeerKAT Galaxy Cluster Legacy Survey (MGCLS), a programme of observations of 115 galaxy clusters, run on South Africa’s MeerKAT Radio Telescope between June 2018 and June 2019, as reported on Monday in the publication Nature.

This led to the “seventh sighting” of what the team named Sauron — in keeping with a Lord of the Rings theme — which shares characteristics of an ORC but needs further study before it can be officially confirmed as one.

Only six confirmed sightings have been recorded, the first by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (Askap) in 2019.

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