Two of Galaxy Zoo’s founders, Chris Lintott, from the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, and Kate Land reflect on the project’s success in September’s Physics World.
While there has been a range of computer programs that make use of the idle time of users’ PCs to churn through scientific data, like ClimatePrediction.net for modelling global warming, Galaxy Zoo was the first of its kind to engage computer users and ask them to apply their own brain power to help sort one type of galaxy from another.
With almost a million galaxy images provided by the robotic Sloan Digital Sky Survey telescope in New Mexico, the Galaxy Zoo team knew it was a tall order. However, even on the day of launch after a small news item on Radio 4’s Today programme, the site was receiving more than 70,000 classifications each hour.
As Lintott and Land write, “An attractive feature of the project was that these galaxies had literally never been looked at before with the human eye – so people really felt that they were helping with original and unique contributions.”
The original impetus for the project was a research dilemma that required a complete reassessment of 50,000 images. Existing criteria used to define elliptical galaxies – colour, density profile and spectral features – appeared to leave out a small fraction of important elliptical galaxies that were undergoing star formation.
The 150,000 amateur astronomers have helped make more than 50 million classifications, thereby helping the researchers obtain a good statistical error for each one. For about a third of the 900,000 galaxies, more than 80 per cent agreed on the morphology which gave the researchers an astoundingly good starting point.
Advances in our understanding of the universe have already been made and a selection of journal articles has already been published. The researchers are now developing Galaxy Zoo to make a more detailed classification of a smaller set of galaxies plus a deliberate search for more unusual objects.
The founders write, “As we develop the citizen science that powers Galaxy Zoo, we can expect many new discoveries to follow. After all, having 150,000 co-authors is an excellent motivator when it comes to writing papers.”
Also in this issue:
•Ugo Amaldi, son of Italian physicist Edoardo Amaldi, reflects on his father’s remarkable scientific life in particle physics, nuclear physics and gravitational-wave research, as well as his key role in setting up CERN and the European Space Agency.
•The discovery of iron-based high-temperature superconductors has prompted a huge surge of interest in these new materials and rekindled the dream of room-temperature superconductivity.
Joseph Winters | Source: alphagalileo
Further information: www.iop.org
www.physicsworld.com/
Further Reports about: Digital Sky > elliptical galaxies > Galaxy > Galaxy Zoo > global warming > Physics World > star formation > Telescope
More articles from Physics and Astronomy:
Better way to harness waste heat
20.11.2009 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
NIST Demonstrates ‘Universal’ Programmable Quantum Processor
20.11.2009 | National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Scientists Unravel Evolution of Highly Toxic Box Jellyfish
20.11.2009 | Life Sciences
When good companies do bad things: Examining illegal corporate behavior
20.11.2009 | Business and Finance
UCR plant scientist's research spawns new discoveries showing how crops survive drought
20.11.2009 | Agricultural and Forestry Science
Multidisciplinary meeting on Urological Cancers aims to benefit cancer patients
20.11.2009 | Event News
'Golden Age' for clinical psychology in Northern Ireland
20.11.2009 | Event News
New Perspectives in Marine Anti-Fouling Research
11.11.2009 | Event News