ORBIT: Cost-Effective Dataset Curation for Large Language Model Domain Adaptation with an Astronomy Case Study

Abstract

Recent advances in language modeling demonstrate the need for high-quality domain-specific training data, especially for tasks that require specialized knowledge. General-purpose models, while versatile, often lack the depth needed for expert-level tasks because of limited domain-specific information. Domain adaptation training can enhance these models, but it demands substantial, high-quality data. To address this, we propose ORBIT, a cost-efficient methodology for curating massive, high-quality domain-specific datasets from noisy web sources, tailored for training specialist large language models. Using astronomy as a primary case study, we refined the 1.3T-token FineWeb-Edu dataset into a high-quality, 10B-token subset focused on astronomy. Fine-tuning LLaMA-3-8B on a 1B-token astronomy subset improved performance on the MMLU astronomy benchmark from 69% to 76% and achieved top results on AstroBench, an astronomy-specific benchmark. Moreover, our model (Orbit-LLaMA) outperformed LLaMA-3-8B-base, with GPT-4o evaluations preferring it in 73% of cases across 1000 astronomy-specific questions. Additionally, we validated ORBIT’s generalizability by applying it to law and medicine, achieving a significant improvement of data quality compared to an unfiltered baseline. We open-source the ORBIT methodology, including the curated datasets, the codebase, and the resulting model.