_version_ 1866909055036948480
author Ghosh, Aritra
Oldag, Drew
Tauraso, Michael
Connolly, Andrew J.
Ferguson, Peter
Jones, Derek
Khullar, Gourav
Sasli, Argyro
Venkatesh, Samarth
Wang, Gracia
West, Maxine
Berry, Dylan
Caplar, Neven
Chandler, Colin Orion
Chatchadanoraset, Tanawan
Coughlin, Michael W.
DeLucchi, Melissa
Junell, Alexandra
Miura, Diego
Nunes, Felipe Fontinele
Beebe, Wilson
Branton, Doug
Campos, Sandro
Cunningham, Liam
Dai, Mi
Kubica, Jeremy
Malanchev, Konstantin
Mandelbaum, Rachel
McGuire, Sean
Pasha, Imad
Taranu, Dan S.
Zhang, Tianqing
author_facet Ghosh, Aritra
Oldag, Drew
Tauraso, Michael
Connolly, Andrew J.
Ferguson, Peter
Jones, Derek
Khullar, Gourav
Sasli, Argyro
Venkatesh, Samarth
Wang, Gracia
West, Maxine
Berry, Dylan
Caplar, Neven
Chandler, Colin Orion
Chatchadanoraset, Tanawan
Coughlin, Michael W.
DeLucchi, Melissa
Junell, Alexandra
Miura, Diego
Nunes, Felipe Fontinele
Beebe, Wilson
Branton, Doug
Campos, Sandro
Cunningham, Liam
Dai, Mi
Kubica, Jeremy
Malanchev, Konstantin
Mandelbaum, Rachel
McGuire, Sean
Pasha, Imad
Taranu, Dan S.
Zhang, Tianqing
contents The NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, Roman Space Telescope, Euclid, and other next-generation surveys will deliver imaging, spectroscopic, and time-domain data at scales that increasingly shift the bottleneck in astronomical machine learning (ML) projects from model design to infrastructure. We present Hyrax, an open-source, modular, GPU-enabled Python framework that supports the full ML lifecycle in astronomy: from data acquisition and training to inference and experiment comparison, with capabilities including multimodal dataset support, integrated vector databases for similarity search, and interactive two- and three-dimensional latent-space exploration for unsupervised discovery. We demonstrate Hyrax's versatility through five representative applications on real survey data: (i) unsupervised representation learning on $\sim 4\times10^5$ Rubin Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Data Preview 1 (DP1) galaxies, surfacing new merger and low-surface-brightness candidates missing from reference Euclid and Dark Energy Survey catalogs, while also isolating imaging artifacts -- all without labeled training data; (ii) hybrid density-based clustering for identifying cluster-scale gravitational lens candidates in DP1 data; (iii) multimodal early-time transient classification in the Zwicky Transient Facility leveraging light curves, spectra, images, and metadata; (iv) supervised false-positive filtering in shift-and-stack searches for distant solar system objects in the Dark Energy Camera Ecliptic Exploration Project survey; and (v) supervised detection of semi-resolved dwarf galaxies in Hyper Suprime-Cam and LSST-like imaging using synthetic source injection. Together, these results demonstrate that Hyrax provides astronomy-specific ML infrastructure that enables systematic discovery and rapid methodological iteration across next-generation astronomical surveys.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_18959
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Hyrax: An Extensible Framework for Rapid ML Experimentation and Unsupervised Discovery in the Era of Rubin, Roman, and Euclid
Ghosh, Aritra
Oldag, Drew
Tauraso, Michael
Connolly, Andrew J.
Ferguson, Peter
Jones, Derek
Khullar, Gourav
Sasli, Argyro
Venkatesh, Samarth
Wang, Gracia
West, Maxine
Berry, Dylan
Caplar, Neven
Chandler, Colin Orion
Chatchadanoraset, Tanawan
Coughlin, Michael W.
DeLucchi, Melissa
Junell, Alexandra
Miura, Diego
Nunes, Felipe Fontinele
Beebe, Wilson
Branton, Doug
Campos, Sandro
Cunningham, Liam
Dai, Mi
Kubica, Jeremy
Malanchev, Konstantin
Mandelbaum, Rachel
McGuire, Sean
Pasha, Imad
Taranu, Dan S.
Zhang, Tianqing
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Machine Learning
The NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, Roman Space Telescope, Euclid, and other next-generation surveys will deliver imaging, spectroscopic, and time-domain data at scales that increasingly shift the bottleneck in astronomical machine learning (ML) projects from model design to infrastructure. We present Hyrax, an open-source, modular, GPU-enabled Python framework that supports the full ML lifecycle in astronomy: from data acquisition and training to inference and experiment comparison, with capabilities including multimodal dataset support, integrated vector databases for similarity search, and interactive two- and three-dimensional latent-space exploration for unsupervised discovery. We demonstrate Hyrax's versatility through five representative applications on real survey data: (i) unsupervised representation learning on $\sim 4\times10^5$ Rubin Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Data Preview 1 (DP1) galaxies, surfacing new merger and low-surface-brightness candidates missing from reference Euclid and Dark Energy Survey catalogs, while also isolating imaging artifacts -- all without labeled training data; (ii) hybrid density-based clustering for identifying cluster-scale gravitational lens candidates in DP1 data; (iii) multimodal early-time transient classification in the Zwicky Transient Facility leveraging light curves, spectra, images, and metadata; (iv) supervised false-positive filtering in shift-and-stack searches for distant solar system objects in the Dark Energy Camera Ecliptic Exploration Project survey; and (v) supervised detection of semi-resolved dwarf galaxies in Hyper Suprime-Cam and LSST-like imaging using synthetic source injection. Together, these results demonstrate that Hyrax provides astronomy-specific ML infrastructure that enables systematic discovery and rapid methodological iteration across next-generation astronomical surveys.
title Hyrax: An Extensible Framework for Rapid ML Experimentation and Unsupervised Discovery in the Era of Rubin, Roman, and Euclid
topic Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.18959