GalaxyZoo.org: An online astronomy project which invites members

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Galaxy Zoo, Experience a privileged glimpse of the distant universe, observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Hubble Space Telescope, is an online astronomy project which invites members of the public to assist in the morphological classification of large numbers of galaxies. It is an example of citizen science as it enlists the help of members of the public to help in scientific research.

GalaxyZoo.org, Online Astronomy Project, Galaxy Zoo

GalaxyZoo.org is one of them, asking regular internet users to help in classifying galaxies, apparently humans are much better in doing this than computers can ever be, but it is a labour intensive programme, thus the need for as much help as possible.

History of Galaxy Zoo

Galaxy Zoo, the 4th, comes just a few weeks after the site’s 5th birthday. It all started back in July 2007, with a data set made up of a million galaxies imaged by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, who still provide some of the images in the site today.

With so many galaxies, we’d assumed it would take years for visitors to the site to work through them all, but within 24 hours of launch we were stunned to be receiving almost 70,000 classifications an hour.

In the end, more than 50 million classifications were received by the project during its first year, contributed by more than 150,000 people.

More than 250,000 people have taken part in the Galaxy Zoo project since its launch in 2007, sorting through over 1 million images. Their findings have ranged from the scientifically exciting to the weird and wonderful.

Assistants are shown pictures of galaxies taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, with a number of rather easy questions about it that needs answering.

There is not a lot terms of rewards, but we believe helping to map the universe should be reward enough.

Find out more about Galaxy Zoo Click Here.

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