Galaxy Zoo

Pawly · **Posted:** Mon Jul 30, 2007 1:29 pm

http://www.galaxyzoo.org/

Galaxy Zoo opens
Press Release: 10 July 2007

Everyone can visit the ‘Galaxy Zoo’

Astronomers are inviting members of the public to help them make major new discoveries by taking part in a census of one million galaxies.

Visitors to www.galaxyzoo.org will get to see stunning images of galaxies, most of which have never been viewed by human eyes before. By sorting these images into “spiral galaxies” (like our own Milky Way) or “elliptical galaxies”, visitors will help astronomers to understand the structure of the universe. The new digital images were taken using the robotic Sloan Digital Sky Survey telescope in New Mexico.

‘It’s not just for fun’ said Kevin Schawinski of Astrophysics at Oxford University where the data will be analysed. ‘The human brain is actually better than a computer at pattern recognition tasks like this. Whether you spend five minutes, fifteen minutes or five hours using the site your contribution will be invaluable.’ Visitors will be able to print out posters of the galaxies they have explored and even compete to see who’s the best virtual astronomer.

M87The galaxyzoo.org team were inspired by projects such as Stardust@home, in which NASA invited the public to sort through dust grains obtained by a mission to Comet Wild-2. Oxford’s Dr Chris Lintott, co-presenter of the BBC’s Sky at Night programme and galaxyzoo.org team member, commented: ‘What the Stardust team achieved was incredible, but our galaxies are much more interesting to look at than their dust grains. We hope that participants in Galaxy Zoo will not only contribute to science, but have a lot of fun along the way.’

Images for the project are taken from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which uses a 142-megapixel digital camera to create the largest digital map of the universe. ‘It is great that digital archives we have built for science are now being used by the public to look at the universe’ says Professor Bob Nichol from the University of Portsmouth. ‘It will be great to have all the galaxies classified; it’s as fundamental as knowing if a human is male or female.’

The astronomers hope that the survey will shed light on how different kinds of galaxies are distributed across the sky. The results might even reveal that there is something fundamentally wrong with existing models of the universe.

Sir Patrick Moore, an enthusiastic supporter of the project, said: ‘Non-professionals have always been deeply involved in studying the sky and they now have yet another opportunity to make themselves really useful. Moreover, their help is now of immense value so do join up – as I am doing myself!’

M101For more information visit www.galaxyzoo.org or contact;
Dr Chris Lintott (+44 (0)1865 273638, mobile: +44 (0)7808 167288)
Kevin Schawinski (+44 (0)1865 273642) or
Professor Bob Nichol (+44 (0)23 9284 3117; mobile +44 (0)7963792049)
Alternatively, contact
the University of Oxford Press Office on +44 (0)1865 283877 or email: press.office@admin.ox.ac.uk

Notes to editors
• The Galaxy Zoo team includes scientists from the University of Oxford, the University of Portsmouth and Johns Hopkins University (USA), and Fingerprint Digital Media of Belfast.
• Images related to the project can be downloaded from www.galaxyzoo.org/Press.aspx
• For more on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey visit www.sdss.org For full details of those involved go to www.sdss.org/collaboration/credits.html

Maxwell · **Posted:** Mon Jul 30, 2007 9:57 pm

nice website

WereChild · **Posted:** Mon Jul 30, 2007 10:00 pm

Did the trial on the site, not as easy as it looks.

ZAPPDOG · **Posted:** Tue Jul 31, 2007 1:25 am

[font=Arial Black] [/font]
SIGNED UP AND EYEBALLING
ITS NICE SEEING WHAT YOU'RE WORKING ON.
GREAT FOR THOSE LONG COMMERCIAL BREAKS.
THANKS FOR THE POINT

Pawly · **Posted:** Mon Dec 03, 2007 4:57 pm

Update:

Quote:

Dear Galaxy Zoo member,

We know that you'd like to hear more about how things are going. We've
just started the next stage of our exciting project - we need to
understand what biases there are in our results, and so if you visit
the site at www.galaxyzoo.org now you'll see some odd images.

1. PROGRESS REPORT

THANK YOU everyone for taking part in this exciting astronomy project. In the
last newsletter we said we were aiming for 20 classifications per galaxy, and
with the help of 100,000 of you, we've smashed that target. Every galaxy has
now been classifed by more than 30 of you, and you all turn out to be fabulous
astronomers!

We have been starting to process the data and getting out some
important science results, which we will be sure to tell you about (we
will be posting updates on the forum www.galaxyzooforum.org). The
first papers aren't too far from being done, and we recently had our
first science meeting (http://tinyurl.com/24qr2o).

While we're still working on the details of our analysis, we've tested your
classifications against previous studies where astronomers have looked at a few
thousand galaxies (the largest sample was by our very own Kevin, the
first results from which are in this technical paper -
http://xxx.arxiv.org/abs/0709.3015) and we are pleased to see that
your results agree really well with theirs.
This is great - it means that your classifications are as good as
those done by professional astronomers, and we have many more galaxies
which is all important.

2. WHAT NEXT?

The final task for us is to check that we understand exactly why you classified
the galaxies the way you did, and how that might affect our final
results. If you log in today you're likely to notice some changes in
the objects you see on Galaxy Zoo - such as images in black and white
for example. Please just carry on
classifying as normal. In fact, even if you haven't logged on for a
while, it would be of
immense help if you could all come back today. If you want a clue as
to why we are doing this, see this article from the Daily Telegraph -
http://tinyurl.com/2hgkag.

Once we've finished our checks, the first phase of Galaxy Zoo will be
over. However, we're working hard on Galaxy Zoo 2.0, which will ask
for more detailed
classifications and (hopefully) will look beyond the galaxies in the
Sloan survey.
Given the quality of the work you've done so far, we reckon that you
can do much more than just divide spirals from ellipticals. The new
site should go live early in 2008.

3. FOLLOW UP

We recently passed a major milestone in Galaxy Zoo, when we
submitted the first observing proposals based on your discoveries.
We're hoping to be able to use telescopes at Kitt Peak
(http://www.noao.edu/kpno/) to chase some of the gravitational lenses
that have been found in the data. We're also following up the work of
those of you who responded to a request for close pairs of galaxies
(http://www.galaxyzooforum.org/index.php?topic=6732.0). Our proposals
are now assessed by a committee of astronomers who decide who gets to
use the telescope, and we should hear back in early December.

Finally, thanks for all the hard work. The excitement is just beginning!

Chris & The Galaxy Zoo team.

Galaxy Zoo

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