---
language:
- en
pipeline_tag: text-generation
tags:
- llama-3.1
- astronomy
- astrophysics
- cosmology
- arxiv
inference: false
base_model:
- meta-llama/Meta-Llama-3.1-8B
---

# AstroSage-Llama-3.1-8B

https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.09012

AstroSage-Llama-3.1-8B is a domain-specialized natural-language AI assistant tailored for research in astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology. Trained on the complete collection of astronomy-related arXiv papers from 2007-2024 along with millions of synthetically-generated question-answer pairs and other astronomical literature, AstroSage-Llama-3.1-8B demonstrates excellent proficiency on a wide range of questions. This achievement demonstrates the potential of domain specialization in AI, suggesting that focused training can yield capabilities exceeding those of much larger, general-purpose models.

## Model Details

- **Base Architecture**: Meta-Llama-3.1-8B
- **Base Model**: Meta-Llama-3.1-8B
- **Parameters**: 8 billion
- **Training Focus**: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology, and Astronomical Instrumentation
- **License**: Llama 3.1 Community License
- **Development Process**:
  1. Continued Pre-training (CPT) on astronomical literature
  2. Supervised Fine-tuning (SFT) on QA pairs and instruction sets
  3. Model merging with Meta-Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct (75% CPT+SFT / 25% Meta-Instruct)

## Using the model

```python
import torch
from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer

# Load the model and tokenizer
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained("AstroMLab/AstroSage-8b", device_map="auto")
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained("AstroMLab/AstroSage-8b")

# Function to generate a response
def generate_response(prompt):
    inputs = tokenizer(prompt, return_tensors="pt").to(model.device)

    outputs = model.generate(
        **inputs,
        max_new_tokens=128,
        do_sample=True,
        pad_token_id=tokenizer.eos_token_id,
    )
    response = outputs[0][inputs['input_ids'].shape[-1]:]
    decoded = tokenizer.decode(response, skip_special_tokens=True)

    return decoded

# Example usage
prompt = """
You are an expert in general astrophysics. Your task is to answer the following question:
What are the main components of a galaxy?
"""
response = generate_response(prompt)
print(response)
```


## Model Improvements and Performance

AstroSage-Llama-3.1-8B shows remarkable performance improvements:

| Model | Score (%) |
|-------|-----------|
| **<span style="color:green">AstroSage-Llama-3.1-8B</span>** | **<span style="color:green">80.9</span>** |
| GPT-4o | 80.4 |
| LLaMA-3.1-8B | 73.7 |
| Gemma-2-9B | 71.5 |
| Qwen-2.5-7B | 70.4 |
| Yi-1.5-9B | 68.4 |
| InternLM-2.5-7B | 64.5 |
| Mistral-7B-v0.3 | 63.9 |
| ChatGLM3-6B | 50.4 |

The model demonstrates:
- Outperformance of all 8B parameter models
- Comparable performance to GPT-4o (80.4%)
- ~1000x more cost-effective than proprietary models
- 7 percentage-point improvement over base Llama-3.1-8b model


## Training Data

- **Continued Pre-training**:
  - ~250,000 arXiv preprints (2007-2024) from astro-ph and gr-qc
  - Astronomy-related Wikipedia articles
  - Selected astronomy textbooks
  - Total: 3.3 billion tokens, 19.9 GB plaintext

- **Supervised Fine-tuning**:
  - 8.8 million curated QA pairs
  - Filtered Infinity-Instruct-7M dataset
  - Paper summaries and metadata
  - Total: 2.0 billion tokens, 9.8 GB plaintext

## Intended Use
- Curiosity-driven question answering
- Brainstorming new ideas
- Astronomical research assistance
- Educational support in astronomy
- Literature review and summarization
- Scientific explanation of concepts

## Limitations
- Training data cutoff: January 2024
- As with all LLMs, hallucinations are possible
- Limited by 8B parameter size for complex reasoning
- Paper metadata not perfectly memorized
- Performance primarily validated on multiple-choice questions
- Primarily trained for use in English

## Technical Specifications
- Architecture: Based on Meta-Llama 3.1
- Training Infrastructure: ORNL OLCF Frontier
- Hosting: Hugging Face Hub (AstroMLab/AstroSage-8B)

## Ethical Considerations

While this model is designed for scientific use:
- Should not be used as sole source for critical research decisions
- Output should be verified against primary sources
- May reflect biases present in astronomical literature

## Citation and Contact

- Corresponding author: Tijmen de Haan (tijmen dot dehaan at gmail dot com)
- AstroMLab: astromachinelearninglab at gmail dot com
- Please cite the AstroMLab 3 paper when referencing this model:
```
@preprint{dehaan2024astromlab3,
      title={AstroMLab 3: Achieving GPT-4o Level Performance in Astronomy with a Specialized 8B-Parameter Large Language Model}, 
      author={Tijmen de Haan and Yuan-Sen Ting and Tirthankar Ghosal and Tuan Dung Nguyen and Alberto Accomazzi and Azton Wells and Nesar Ramachandra and Rui Pan and Zechang Sun},
      year={2024},
      eprint={2411.09012},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={astro-ph.IM},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.09012}, 
}
```