Astronomy, also known as astrophysics, is an exciting and thriving field in physics that aims to unravel the mysteries of the Universe. By its very nature, astronomy is an interdisciplinary field, encompassing various aspects such as:

• Engineering: Building the largest telescopes with the most advanced optics and mechanical engineering.
• Physics and Mathematics: Modeling the underlying operations of stars, galaxies, and beyond.
• Data Analytic and Artificial Intelligence: Exploring the vast amounts of data, including 100 billion images and time series, and 100 million spectra.

Astronomy covers a wide range of topics that can benefit from modern-day large language models for retrieving and generating information from the extensive corpus of knowledge spanning various fields of physical sciences.

Moreover, astronomy has two distinct advantages compared to other fields when it comes to understanding common sense AI:

1. Astronomers have long adopted an open sky policy, where much of the data is publicly available. This has fostered a collaborative environment where scientists can cooperate even during challenging times of geopolitical conflict. The open access to data, with myriad datasets readily downloadable worldwide, makes astronomy one of the most natural domains to explore the possibility of autonomous research.

2. We believe that modern-day AI, especially LLMs, can help expedite discoveries in astronomy. Additionally, astronomy has little ethical burden when it comes to generating new ideas or hypotheses, as errors would not directly impact the world. This makes astronomy an excellent sandbox for studying large language models themselves.