Galaxy Zoo
Encyclopedia
Galaxy Zoo 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. An improved version—Galaxy Zoo 2—went live on 17 February 2009. The current iteration of the project, launched in April 2010, is Galaxy Zoo: Hubble, and uses Hubble Space Telescope
survey data. It is part of the Zooniverse
group of citizen science projects.
at the Apache Point Observatory
in New Mexico, United States. "I classified 50,000 galaxies myself in a week, it was mind-numbing." According to Chris Lintott
- another founder of the project and co-host of the long-running astronomical television programme The Sky at Night
- "In many parts of science, we're not constrained by what data we can get, we're constrained by what we can do with the data we have. Citizen science is a very powerful way of solving that problem." The concept was inspired by Stardust@home
, where the public was asked by NASA
to search images obtained from a mission to a comet
for interstellar dust impacts. Unlike earlier internet-based citizen science projects such as SETI@home
which used spare computer processing power to analyse data, known as distributed or volunteer computing, the active participation of human volunteers was needed to complete the research task. It was hoped that 20-30,000 people would take part, and estimated that one graduate student working 24 hours a day and 7 days a week would take 3-5 years to do the same task.
Galaxy Zoo is a collaboration between researchers at many institutions, including Oxford University, Portsmouth University, Nottingham University, Johns Hopkins University
, Yale University
, University of California, Berkeley
and Fingerprint Digital Media, Belfast.
is actually much better than a computer at these pattern-recognition tasks."Without human volunteers, it would take researchers years to process the photographs, but it is estimated that with as few as 10,000 to 20,000 people giving up time to classify the galaxies, the process could be complete in one month.
No knowledge of astronomy is required. In the site's tutorial
, would-be volunteers are shown spirals, ellipticals etc., and can try guessing before being shown the correct answer. Also shown are pictures of stars and satellite trails, which the robot telescope would have recorded without being able to classify them. Volunteers are then tested on some additional pictures and signed up if they get a reasonable number of correct results.
, another member of the team behind the project commented that, "One advantage is that you get to see parts of space that have never been seen before. These images were taken by a robotic telescope
and processed automatically, so the odds are that when you log on, that first galaxy you see will be one that no human has seen before." This was confirmed by Schawinski, "Most of these galaxies have been photographed by a robotic telescope, and then processed by computer. So this is the first time they will have been seen by human eyes."
or spiral
and, if spiral, whether they are rotating in a clockwise or anti-clockwise direction. The images were taken automatically by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
using a digital camera
mounted on a telescope
at the Apache Point Observatory
in New Mexico
, United States
. It is hoped this census will provide valuable information about how different kinds of galaxies are distributed, allowing scientists to determine whether existing galactic models are correct. It is an example of citizen science
.
Theorists believe that spiral galaxies can merge and become ellipticals, and also that ellipticals can become spirals if they receive more gas or stars. In addition, Professor Michael Longo of the University of Michigan
has claimed that the rotation of spiral galaxies is not random, which would force a major rethink of cosmology if it were correct. This is based on a survey of 1,660 galaxies: a much larger sample could support or disprove it.
This target was later raised to 30, in light of the continuing enthusiasm of the volunteers. The final datasets contain 34,617,406 clicks done by 82,931 users. Work was then done to test for bias, by presenting images in black-and-white and / or photographically reversed. This is needed to check whether the apparent surplus of anti-clockwise spirals was actually a bias of the human eye (as seems to be the case).
There is also now a 'science blog', an official summary of what the 'zoo' has achieved so far. There is a current project seeking volunteers to review a set of possible merging galaxies.
The project closed with some 60 million classifications. The first papers from Zoo 2 are already complete, and much science work continues. Galaxy classification by volunteers continues with Galaxy Zoo Hubble.
for Hanny's object, was spotted by a member called Hanny van Arkel and has attracted some scientific interest. This discovery was featured as NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day
on June 25, 2008. It is now thought to be a portion of a gas-cloud, heated by the jet from a black hole.
Here the list of studies derived from the project with related information (In green the accepted and published). One of these concerns the evolution of 'red and dead' spiral galaxies into ellipticals.
It has recently been confirmed that "spiral galaxies which share a neighbourhood (a region defined as 65 million light years
across) are likely to rotate in the same direction—but only if they formed the vast majority of their stars more than 10 billion years ago." (This is distinct from the idea of a bias in the much vaster area of the entire survey, which does not seem to be true.)
A November 2010 announcement based on Galaxy Zoo: Bars in Disk Galaxies suggests that bars help to slow or stop star formation in spirals, by some unknown mechanism. This is based on the observation that red spirals are about twice as likely to host bars as blue spirals.
A number of telescopes are being used to follow up on Galaxy Zoo object discoveries, including Kitt Peak
in Arizona and the IRAM millimeter dish
in Spain.
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...
project which invites members of the public to assist in the morphological classification of large numbers of galaxies
Galaxy
A galaxy is a massive, gravitationally bound system that consists of stars and stellar remnants, an interstellar medium of gas and dust, and an important but poorly understood component tentatively dubbed dark matter. The word galaxy is derived from the Greek galaxias , literally "milky", a...
. It is an example of citizen science
Citizen science
Citizen science is a term used for the systematic collection and analysis of data; development of technology; testing of natural phenomena; and the dissemination of these activities by researchers on a primarily avocational basis...
as it enlists the help of members of the public to help in scientific research. An improved version—Galaxy Zoo 2—went live on 17 February 2009. The current iteration of the project, launched in April 2010, is Galaxy Zoo: Hubble, and uses Hubble Space Telescope
Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope that was carried into orbit by a Space Shuttle in 1990 and remains in operation. A 2.4 meter aperture telescope in low Earth orbit, Hubble's four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared...
survey data. It is part of the Zooniverse
Zooniverse (citizen science project)
Zooniverse is a citizen science web portal that grew from the original Galaxy Zoo project. It hosts numerous projects which allow users to participate in scientific research from classifying galaxies to collating climate data...
group of citizen science projects.
Origins
Scientists are increasingly finding it difficult to cope with what has been called the "Data Deluge", where modern research is producing vast sets of information. Often the teams involved don't have the time, resources or brainpower to analyse it all. Kevin Schawinski, an astrophysicist at Oxford University and co-founder of Galaxy Zoo, described the problem that led to Galaxy Zoo's creation when he was set the task of classifying the morphology of ~1 million galaxies by eye that had been imaged by the Sloan Digital Sky SurveySloan Digital Sky Survey
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey or SDSS is a major multi-filter imaging and spectroscopic redshift survey using a dedicated 2.5-m wide-angle optical telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, United States. The project was named after the Alfred P...
at the Apache Point Observatory
Apache Point Observatory
The Apache Point Observatory is located in the Sacramento Mountains in Sunspot, New Mexico 18 miles south of Cloudcroft. The observatory consists of the Astrophysical Research Consortium's 3.5-meter telescope, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey 2.5-m telescope with a 20" photometric telescope,...
in New Mexico, United States. "I classified 50,000 galaxies myself in a week, it was mind-numbing." According to Chris Lintott
Chris Lintott
Christopher John Lintott is an English astrophysicist currently serving as the Director of Citizen Science at the Adler Planetarium. He is a post-doctoral researcher who is involved in a number of popular science projects aimed at bringing astronomical science to a wider audience...
- another founder of the project and co-host of the long-running astronomical television programme The Sky at Night
The Sky at Night
The Sky at Night is a monthly documentary television programme on astronomy produced by the BBC. The show has had the same permanent presenter, Sir Patrick Moore, from its first airing on 24 April 1957, making it the longest-running programme with the same presenter in television history.The...
- "In many parts of science, we're not constrained by what data we can get, we're constrained by what we can do with the data we have. Citizen science is a very powerful way of solving that problem." The concept was inspired by Stardust@home
Stardust@home
Stardust@home is a citizen science project that encourages volunteers to search images for tiny interstellar dust impacts. The project began providing data for analysis on August 1, 2006....
, where the public was asked by NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
to search images obtained from a mission to a comet
Comet
A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when close enough to the Sun, displays a visible coma and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are both due to the effects of solar radiation and the solar wind upon the nucleus of the comet...
for interstellar dust impacts. Unlike earlier internet-based citizen science projects such as SETI@home
SETI@home
SETI@home is an Internet-based public volunteer computing project employing the BOINC software platform, hosted by the Space Sciences Laboratory, at the University of California, Berkeley, in the United States. SETI is an acronym for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence...
which used spare computer processing power to analyse data, known as distributed or volunteer computing, the active participation of human volunteers was needed to complete the research task. It was hoped that 20-30,000 people would take part, and estimated that one graduate student working 24 hours a day and 7 days a week would take 3-5 years to do the same task.
Galaxy Zoo is a collaboration between researchers at many institutions, including Oxford University, Portsmouth University, Nottingham University, Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...
, Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
and Fingerprint Digital Media, Belfast.
Importance of volunteers
Computer programs have been unable to reliably classify the galaxies. According to a member of the team behind the project, Kevin Schawinski, "The human brainHuman brain
The human brain has the same general structure as the brains of other mammals, but is over three times larger than the brain of a typical mammal with an equivalent body size. Estimates for the number of neurons in the human brain range from 80 to 120 billion...
is actually much better than a computer at these pattern-recognition tasks."Without human volunteers, it would take researchers years to process the photographs, but it is estimated that with as few as 10,000 to 20,000 people giving up time to classify the galaxies, the process could be complete in one month.
No knowledge of astronomy is required. In the site's tutorial
Tutorial
A tutorial is one method of transferring knowledge and may be used as a part of a learning process. More interactive and specific than a book or a lecture; a tutorial seeks to teach by example and supply the information to complete a certain task....
, would-be volunteers are shown spirals, ellipticals etc., and can try guessing before being shown the correct answer. Also shown are pictures of stars and satellite trails, which the robot telescope would have recorded without being able to classify them. Volunteers are then tested on some additional pictures and signed up if they get a reasonable number of correct results.
Previously unseen images
Chris LintottChris Lintott
Christopher John Lintott is an English astrophysicist currently serving as the Director of Citizen Science at the Adler Planetarium. He is a post-doctoral researcher who is involved in a number of popular science projects aimed at bringing astronomical science to a wider audience...
, another member of the team behind the project commented that, "One advantage is that you get to see parts of space that have never been seen before. These images were taken by a robotic telescope
Robotic telescope
A robotic telescope is an astronomical telescope and detector system that makes observations without the intervention of a human. In astronomical disciplines, a telescope qualifies as robotic if it makes those observations without being operated by a human, even if a human has to initiate the...
and processed automatically, so the odds are that when you log on, that first galaxy you see will be one that no human has seen before." This was confirmed by Schawinski, "Most of these galaxies have been photographed by a robotic telescope, and then processed by computer. So this is the first time they will have been seen by human eyes."
Original purpose
Galaxy Zoo volunteers were asked to judge from the images whether the galaxies are ellipticalElliptical galaxy
An elliptical galaxy is a galaxy having an approximately ellipsoidal shape and a smooth, nearly featureless brightness profile. They range in shape from nearly spherical to highly flat and in size from hundreds of millions to over one trillion stars...
or spiral
Spiral galaxy
A spiral galaxy is a certain kind of galaxy originally described by Edwin Hubble in his 1936 work The Realm of the Nebulae and, as such, forms part of the Hubble sequence. Spiral galaxies consist of a flat, rotating disk containing stars, gas and dust, and a central concentration of stars known as...
and, if spiral, whether they are rotating in a clockwise or anti-clockwise direction. The images were taken automatically by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
Sloan Digital Sky Survey
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey or SDSS is a major multi-filter imaging and spectroscopic redshift survey using a dedicated 2.5-m wide-angle optical telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, United States. The project was named after the Alfred P...
using a digital camera
Digital camera
A digital camera is a camera that takes video or still photographs, or both, digitally by recording images via an electronic image sensor. It is the main device used in the field of digital photography...
mounted on a telescope
Telescope
A telescope is an instrument that aids in the observation of remote objects by collecting electromagnetic radiation . The first known practical telescopes were invented in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 1600s , using glass lenses...
at the Apache Point Observatory
Apache Point Observatory
The Apache Point Observatory is located in the Sacramento Mountains in Sunspot, New Mexico 18 miles south of Cloudcroft. The observatory consists of the Astrophysical Research Consortium's 3.5-meter telescope, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey 2.5-m telescope with a 20" photometric telescope,...
in New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. It is hoped this census will provide valuable information about how different kinds of galaxies are distributed, allowing scientists to determine whether existing galactic models are correct. It is an example of citizen science
Citizen science
Citizen science is a term used for the systematic collection and analysis of data; development of technology; testing of natural phenomena; and the dissemination of these activities by researchers on a primarily avocational basis...
.
Theorists believe that spiral galaxies can merge and become ellipticals, and also that ellipticals can become spirals if they receive more gas or stars. In addition, Professor Michael Longo of the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
has claimed that the rotation of spiral galaxies is not random, which would force a major rethink of cosmology if it were correct. This is based on a survey of 1,660 galaxies: a much larger sample could support or disprove it.
Progress
On August 2, 2007, Galaxy Zoo issued its first newsletter which explained that 80,000 volunteers had already classified more than 10 million images of galaxies, meeting the goals for the first phase of the project. The aim now is,This target was later raised to 30, in light of the continuing enthusiasm of the volunteers. The final datasets contain 34,617,406 clicks done by 82,931 users. Work was then done to test for bias, by presenting images in black-and-white and / or photographically reversed. This is needed to check whether the apparent surplus of anti-clockwise spirals was actually a bias of the human eye (as seems to be the case).
Forums and Blogs
There is also an active forum attached to Galaxy Zoo, where volunteers post the more striking images and discuss what they are. There are already some interesting (unofficial) results. Ring galaxies turn out to be much more common than was believed. Only two known galaxies were 'three legged' - possessing three well-defined spiral arms. Many more have now been found. There are many pictures of merging, colliding or interacting galaxies.There is also now a 'science blog', an official summary of what the 'zoo' has achieved so far. There is a current project seeking volunteers to review a set of possible merging galaxies.
Galaxy Zoo 2
This consists of some 250,000 of the brightest galaxies from the Galaxy Zoo. Galaxy Zoo 2 allows for a much more detailed classification, by shape and by the intensity or dimness of the galactic core, and with a special section for oddities like mergers or ring galaxies. The sample also contains fewer optical oddities and orange blobs.The project closed with some 60 million classifications. The first papers from Zoo 2 are already complete, and much science work continues. Galaxy classification by volunteers continues with Galaxy Zoo Hubble.
Discoveries
An object known as , DutchDutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
for Hanny's object, was spotted by a member called Hanny van Arkel and has attracted some scientific interest. This discovery was featured as NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Astronomy Picture of the Day is a website provided by NASA and Michigan Technological University . According to the website, "Each day a different image or photograph of our universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer."The photograph is not necessarily...
on June 25, 2008. It is now thought to be a portion of a gas-cloud, heated by the jet from a black hole.
Here the list of studies derived from the project with related information (In green the accepted and published). One of these concerns the evolution of 'red and dead' spiral galaxies into ellipticals.
| Title | Authors | Status | Links |
Galaxy Zoo: The large-scale spin statistics of spiral galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey |
Kate Land, Anze Slosar, Chris J. Lintott, Dan Andreescu, Steven Bamford, Phil Murray, Robert Nichol, M. Jordan Raddick, Kevin Schawinski, Alex Szalay, Daniel Thomas, Jan Vandenberg | Submitted 21 March 2008 Accepted 19 May 2008 Published MNRAS Vol. 388 Issue 4 pp. 1686-1692 |
astro-ph |
| Galaxy Zoo : Morphologies Derived from Visual Inspection of Galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey | Chris J. Lintott, Kevin Schawinski, Anze Slosar, Kate Land, Steven Bamford, Daniel Thomas, M. Jordan Raddick, Robert C. Nichol, Alex Szalay, Dan Andreescu, Phil Murray, Jan VandenBerg | Submitted 16 April 2008 Accepted 4 July 2008 Published MNRAS Volume 389 Issue 3 pp. 1179 - 1189 |
astro-ph |
| Galaxy Zoo: The Dependence of Morphology and Colour on Environment | Steven P. Bamford, Robert C. Nichol, Ivan K. Baldry, Kate Land, Chris J. Lintott, Kevin Schawinski, Anze Slosar, Alexander S. Szalay, Daniel Thomas, Mehri Torki, Dan Andreescu, Edward M. Edmondson, Christopher J. Miller, Phil Murray, M. Jordan Raddick, Jan Vandenberg | Submitted 16 May 2008 Accepted 13 November 2008 Published MNRAS Volume 393 Issue 4 pp. 1324 - 1352 |
astro-ph |
| Galaxy Zoo: A Sample of Blue Early-type Galaxies at Low Redshift | Kevin Schawinski, Chris J. Lintott, Daniel Thomas, Marc Sarzi, Dan Andreescu, Steven P. Bamford, Sugata Kaviraj, Sadegh Khochfar, Kate Land, Phil Murray, Robert C. Nichol, M. Jordan Raddick, Anze Slosar, Alex Szalay, Jan VandenBerg, Sukyoung K. Yi | Submitted 14 June 2008 Accepted 19 March 2009 Published MNRAS Volume 396 Issue 2 pp. 818 - 829 |
astro-ph |
| Galaxy Zoo: 'Hanny's Voorwerp', a Quasar Light Echo ? | Chris J. Lintott, Kevin Scawinski, William Keel, Hanny van Arkel, Edward Edmondson, Daniel Thomas, Nicola Bennert, Daniel J.B. Smith, Peter D. Herbert, Matt J. Jarvis, Dan Andreescu, Steven P. Bamford, Kate Land, Phil Murray, Robert C. Nichol, M. Jordan Raddick, Anze Slosar, Alex Szalay, Jan Vandenberg | Submitted 15 July 2008 Accepted 23 June 2009 Published MNRAS Volume 399 Issue 1 pp. 129 - 140 |
astro-ph |
| Galaxy Zoo: Chiral Correlation Function of Galaxy Spins | Anze Slosar, Kate Land, Steven Bamford, Chris J. Lintott, Dan Andreescu, Phil Murray, Robert Nichol, M. Jordan Raddick, Kevin Schawinski, Alex Szalay, Daniel Thomas, Jan Vandenberg | Submitted 12 September 2008 Accepted 22 October 2008 Published MNRAS Volume 392 Issue 3 pp. 1225 - 1232 |
astro-ph |
| Galaxy Zoo: Disentangling the Environmental Dependence of Morphology and Colour | Ramin A. Skibba, Steven P. Bamford, Robert C. Nichol, Chris J. Lintott, Dan Andreescu, Edward M. Edmondson, Phil Murray, M. Jordan Raddick, Kevin Schawinski, Anze Slosar, Alexander S. Szalay, Daniel Thomas, Jan Vandenberg | Submitted 20 November 2008 Accepted 29 June 2009 Published MNRAS Volume 399 Issue 2 pp. 966 - 982 |
astro-ph |
| Galaxy Zoo: The Fraction of Merging Galaxies in the SDSS and Their Morphologies | D. W. Darg, Sugata Kaviraj, Chris J. Lintott, Kevin Schawinski, Marc Sarzi, Steven P. Bamford, J. Silk, R. Proctor, Dan Andreescu, Phil Murray, Robert C. Nichol, M. Jordan Raddick, Anze Slosar, Alex S. Szalay, Daniel Thomas, Jan Vandenberg | Submitted 28 November 2008 Accepted 8 September 2009 Published MNRAS Volume 401 Issue 2 pp. 1043 - 1056 |
astro-ph |
| Galaxy Zoo: An Unusual New Class of Galaxy Cluster | Marven F. Pedbost, Trillean Pomalgu, the Galaxy Zoo Team | Submitted March 2009 | astro-ph |
| Galaxy Zoo: The Properties of Merging Galaxies in the Nearby Universe - Local Environments, Colours, Masses, Star-formation Rates and AGN Activity | D. W. Darg, Sugata Kaviraj, Chris J. Lintott, Kevin Schawinski, Marc Sarzi, Steven P. Bamford, J. Silk, Dan Andreescu, P. Murray, R. C. Nichol, M. Jordan Raddick, Anze Slosar, Alex S. Szalay, Daniel Thomas, Jan Vandenberg | Submitted 16 March 2009 Accepted 25 September 2009 Published MNRAS Volume 401 Issue 3 pp. 1552 - 1563 |
astro-ph |
| Galaxy Zoo Green Peas: Discovery of A Class of Compact Extremely Star Forming Galaxies | Caroline Cardamone, Kevin Scawinski, Marc Sarzi, Steven P. Bamford, Nicola Bennert, C.M. Urry, Chris J. Lintott, William C. Keel, John Parejiko, Robert C. Nichol, Daniel Thomas, Dan Andreescu, Phil Murray, M. Jordan Raddick, Anze Slosar, Jan Vandenberg | Submitted 10 April 2009 Accepted 9 July 2009 Published MNRAS Volume 399 Issue 3 pp. 1191 - 1205 |
astro-ph |
| Galaxy Zoo: A Correlation Between Coherence of Galaxy Spin Chirality and Star Formation Efficiency | Raul Jimenez, Anze Slosar, Licia Verde, Steven P. Bamford, Chris J. Lintott, Kevin Scawinski, Robert Nichol, Dan Andreescu, Kate Land, Phil Murray, M. Jordan Raddick, Alex Szalay, Daniel Thomas, Jan Vandenberg | Submitted 9 June 2009 Accepted 11 January 2010 Published MNRAS Volume 404 Issue 2 pp. 975 - 980 |
astro-ph |
| Galaxy Zoo: Reproducing Galaxy Morphologies Via Machine Learning | Manda Banerji, Ofer Lahav, Chris J. Lintott, Filipe B. Abdalla, Kevin Scawinski, Steven P. Bamford, Dan Andreescu, Phil Murray, M. Jordan Raddick, Anze Slosar, Alex Szalay, Daniel Thomas, Jan Vandenberg | Submitted 4 August 2009 Accepted 17 March 2010 Published MNRAS Volume 406 Issue 1 pp. 342 - 353 |
astro-ph |
| Galaxy Zoo: Dust in Spirals | Karen L. Masters, Robert C. Nichol, Steven P. Bamford, Moein Mosleh, Chris J. Lintott, Dan Andreescu, Edward M. Edmondson, William C. Keel, Phil Murray, M. Jordan Raddick, Kevin Schawinsky, Anze Slosar, Alex S. Szalay, Daniel Thomas, Jan Vandenberg | Submitted 17 August 2009 Accepted 12 January 2010 Published MNRAS Volume 404 Issue 1 pp. 792 - 810 |
astro-ph |
| Galaxy Zoo: Exploring the Motivations of Citizen Science Volunteers | M. Jordan Riddick, Georgia Bracey, Pamela Gay, Chris J. Lintott, Kevin Scawinski, Alex Szalay, Jan Vanderberg | Submitted 01 June 2009 Accepted 24 August 2009 Published Astronomy Education Review Volume 9 Issue 1 p. 010103 |
astro-ph |
| Galaxy Zoo: Passive Red Spirals | Karen L. Masters, Moein Mosleh, A. Kathy Romer, Robert C. Nichol, Steven P. Bamford, Kevin Schawinsky, Chris J. Lintott, Dan Andreescu, Heather C. Campbell, Ben Crowcroft, Isabelle Doyle, Edward M. Edmondson, Phil Murray, M. Jordan Raddick, Anze Slosar, Alex S. Szalay, Jan Vandenberg | Submitted 19 October 2009 Accepted 10 February 2010 Published MNRAS online. |
astro-ph |
| Revealing Hanny's Voorwerp: radio observations of IC 2497 | G. I. G. Jozsa, M. A. Garrett, T. A. Oosterloo, H. Rampadarath, Z. Paragi, Hanny van Arkel, Chris Lintott, William C. Keel, Kevin Scawinski, Edd Edmondson | Published Astronomy & Astrophysics - A&A 500, L33–L36 (2009) |
astro-ph |
| Galaxy Zoo: The Fundamentally Different Co-evolution of Supermassive Black Holes and Their early- and late-type Host Galaxies | Kevin Schawinsky, C. Megan Urry, Shanil Virani, Paolo Coppi, Steven P. Bamford, Ezequiel Treister, Chris J. Lintott, Marc Sarzi, William C. Keel, Sugata Kaviraj, Carolin N. Cardamone, Karen L. Masters, Nicholas P. Ross, Dan Andreescu, Phil Murray, Robert C. Nichol, M. Jordan Raddick, Anze Slosar, Alex S. Szalay, Daniel Thomas, Jan Vandenberg | Submitted 5 August 2009 Accepted 20 January 2010 Published Astrophys. J. Volume 711 Issue 1 pp. 284 - 302 |
astro-ph |
| Galaxy Zoo: Bars in Disk Galaxies | Karen L. Masters, Robert C. Nichl, Ben Hoyle, Chris J. Lintott, Steven Bamford, Edward M. Edmondson, Lucy Fortson, William C. Keel, Kevin Schawinsky, Arfon Smith, Daniel Thomas. | Submitted February 2010 Accepted 7 October 2010 Published MNRAS Volume 411 Issue 3 pp. 2026 - 2034 |
astro-ph |
| The Sudden Death of the Nearest Quasar | Kevin Schawinski, Daniel A. Evans, Shanil Virani, C. Megan Urry, William C. Keel, Priyamvada Natarajan, Chris J. Lintott, Anna Manning, Paolo Coppi, Sugata Kaviraj, Steven P. Bamford, Gyula I. G. Jozsa, Michael Garrett, Hanny van Arkel, Pamela Gay, Lucy Fortson. | Submitted 24 August 2010 Accepted 12 October 2010 Published Astrophys. J. Letters Volume 724 Issue 1 pp. L30 - L33 |
astro-ph |
| Galaxy Zoo: Multi-Mergers and the Millennium Simulation | D. W. Darg, S. Kaviraj, C. J. Lintott, K. Schawinski, J. Silk, S. Lynn, S. Bamford, R. C. Nichol. | Submitted to MNRAS | astro-ph |
| Galaxy Zoo: Bar Lengths in Nearby Disk Galaxies | Ben Hoyle, Karen. L. Masters, Robert C. Nichol, Edward M. Edmondson, Arfon M. Smith, Chris Lintott, Ryan Scranton, Steven Bamford, Kevin Schawinski, Daniel Thomas. | Accepted in MNRAS | astro-ph |
It has recently been confirmed that "spiral galaxies which share a neighbourhood (a region defined as 65 million light years
across) are likely to rotate in the same direction—but only if they formed the vast majority of their stars more than 10 billion years ago." (This is distinct from the idea of a bias in the much vaster area of the entire survey, which does not seem to be true.)
A November 2010 announcement based on Galaxy Zoo: Bars in Disk Galaxies suggests that bars help to slow or stop star formation in spirals, by some unknown mechanism. This is based on the observation that red spirals are about twice as likely to host bars as blue spirals.
A number of telescopes are being used to follow up on Galaxy Zoo object discoveries, including Kitt Peak
Kitt Peak National Observatory
The Kitt Peak National Observatory is a United States astronomical observatory located on 2,096 m Kitt Peak of the Quinlan Mountains in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert on the Tohono O'odham Nation, southwest of Tucson...
in Arizona and the IRAM millimeter dish
Institut de radioastronomie millimétrique
The Institut de radioastronomie millimétrique operates two observatories for radio astronomy at millimeter wavelengths, which are open to the international astronomical community: the 30-m single-dish radio telescope located on Pico Veleta in the Spanish Sierra Nevada , and the six-antenna...
in Spain.
External links
- Galaxy Zoo
- Galaxy Zoo Forum
- The official blog of the Galaxy Zoo project
- Original Blog of the most interesting galaxies found on Galaxy Zoo superseded by the official blog above
- Sloan Digital Sky Survey - Famous Places
- Another blog of images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
- Radio station featuring interviews from the team
- How do you count the stars? - a BBC short newsfilm
- Discovery of Green-Pea Galaxies - Skymania News
- Discovery of Red Spirals - Skymania News