Galaxy Zoo Catalogs the Universe
Credit & Copyright: SDSS, Galaxy Zoo; Composite: Richard Nowell & Hannah Hutchins
Posted on 10/26/2009 5:40:37 AM PDT by sig226
Explanation: You, too, can Zoo. The Galaxy Zoo project has been enabling citizen scientists -- inquisitive people like yourself armed with only a web browser-- to sort through the universe. Specifically, after a brief training session, volunteers are asked to use the superior image-processing power of their minds to classify and measure properties of galaxies in the vast Sloan Digital Sky Survey. In its two short years of existence, millions of galaxies have already been inspected by thousands of enthusiastic volunteers. Using Galaxy Zoo data, for example, the universe has been discovered to create no preferred spin direction, an unusual and unclassified object was found that is still being investigated, and a whole class of small galaxies dubbed Green Peas were uncovered where star formation occurs at an extraordinary high rate. Further, the Galaxy Zoo may be setting a precedent for a new type of scientific inquiry where the web helps collect, focus and coordinate human and machine intelligence. Pictured above, a group of vibrant mergers found by Zooites demonstrates the diverse zoo-like nature of many interacting galaxies in the universe.
The sloan digital sky survey has a neat little program. Personally I think its superior to the sky in google earth in some ways.
For years i used a program called Starry Night.
I was really pretty cool and would tell me exactly what i was looking at in my backyard sky.
It stopped working for some reason and I don’t have the original disk.
bummer.
I’ll check out Sloan.
I wonder if the latest Starry Night is any good, if they still amke it that is...
Looks like a bunch of lil sperms.
I wrote a note to all the science teachers at my kid’s middle school as well as the STRETCH teacher, introducing this program as something they may want to consider incorporating into their Astronomy curriculum.
be careful, they might think that the astronomy industry put you up to that and it’s another astroturf campaign. :)
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