Have you explored the incredible galaxies at Galaxy Zoo?

[liometopum]

I have been classifying galaxies at the galaxy zoo site, reachable at https://www.zooniverse.org/
This is a citizen science site, and they need people to help. I have been exclusively at the galaxy zoo site, which you access by clicking on the "Space" link. There are about one million images, via the SDSS project.

This is a chance in a lifetime, a first in history (although it has been around for a few years), to be allowed to critically examine color images of galaxies, near and far, and to help astronomers by doing your best to classify the galaxies. You can save the images to 'collections' you make for yourself, and you can easily access some nice imaging software and data on the galaxies. If you like galaxies, this is the place to be.

I can't think of a better way to learn about galaxies, than to critically examine them, and you can do this from your home. I have classified over 3000, but some people have classified vastly more. Doing this is really fun, challenging, and addicting. You learn, while helping. I have been referring to a long paper, Galaxy Morphology, by Ronald J Buta, available at http://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.3529v1.pdf I keep a copy as a pdf on my desktop to pull up quickly, when I am in need of help. I think one of the more enjoyable aspects is possibly being the first person to examine, and comment on, many of these galaxies.

And galaxies are just one of a great many astronomical projects you can help with, as you will see if you go the zooniverse link. https://www.zooniverse.org/ Make sure you register to get credit for you work.

 

[Drakkith]

Interesting. I participated in classifying light curves of transits, but not galaxies.

 

[liometopum]

I see some new people are going in. Read this tutorial. I used it for a long time as a reference.

http://zoo2.galaxyzoo.org/how_to_take_part

 

[liometopum]

I wanted to share an image I pulled up this evening. The galaxy provided by the Galaxy Zoo Server for classification was for
AGZ0004Z2S, the galaxy left of center. Going into SkyServer, and changing the settings to see a larger area, shows a sort of twin galaxy, possibly the galaxy that caused the disturbance. Notice their almost mirror-image aspect, including the blue star forming area. Is that not cool?

Galaxy Zoo is offering us average people a chance, one that has never existed before a few years ago, to see closeup, color images of objects, and in particular, help advance the study of the universe.

 

[liometopum]

Some Galaxy Zoo Tutorials:

As there are no Galaxy Zoo YouTube tutorials, I created several short videos to help newbees get started classifying, and to show some features that took me time to discover.
looking at stars
classifying a bar galaxy and a disturbed spiral
Using navigate, explore, and finding photometric redshift

 

[liometopum]

A few weeks ago, Galaxy Zoo was given a new assignment. They are now classifying images from the GOODS and CANDELS surveys.

The Wikipedia article says about CANDLES: "...the largest project in the history of Hubble, with 902 assigned orbits of observing time. It is being carried out with two cameras on board Hubble – WFC3 and ACS – and aims to explore galactic evolution in the early Universe, and the very first seeds of cosmic structure at less than one billion years after the Big Bang." And I can bet everyone is familiar with the Hubble Deep Field.

The images are far better than what we get with SDSS, and I thought those were great. With the SDSS, a galaxy at z=0.1 was pushing the limits. The new images show galaxies with spectrographic z values far exceeding 1. For example, 'Ramberts' has just posted a galaxy image with z = 4.160.

Here is a side-by-side comparison of a small galaxy cluster from the SDSS and Hubble, with a spectroscopic z= 0.189.

And it gets better. Here is another set of side-by-side, with z= 0.5286

Many images, however, often appear surprisingly poor, especially to those familiar with the SDSS images. And that is, at least in part, due to the ability of the Hubble telescope to capture very faint and remote objects, and these often show up as fuzzy blobs. Don't be discouraged. This is a chance to critically examine the best images of ancient galaxies, those with high redshift. This particular project will likely be done within a month or two, so if you want to explore it, check out Galaxy Zoo.