Galaxy Zoo: You Can Help Categorize Galaxies

If you ever wanted to volunteer and like outer space, this is something for you. Like the stardust at home project through Berkeley, the Galaxy Zoo project needs people to sort through pictures of galaxies and classify them. For about a century, astronomers have been discussing how all the galaxies should be classified. In addition, how they relate to one another, in their attempts to understand how they form.

Galaxies are made up of billons of stars, each like our own Sun. Their light, lights up even the most distant regions of space and not all are alike. They come in different shapes and can be made up of different properties; they can be young or old, regular and confused, blue or red, very faint or luminous. Early last century Edwin Hubble divided galaxies into two major categories, "Elliptical", and "Spirals". After eighty years, there is still controversy among scientists as to how these two types of galaxies are connected, if they even are, and in understanding how galaxies are formed and their evolution process. Scientists want definitive answer to these questions, maybe even figure out the structure of the universe

Scientists want to know if one type evolves to another, in theoretical simulation they have found that Spiral galaxies merging can create an Elliptical, and elliptical's can become Spiral's during its lifetime. Thanks to modern telescopes on earth and in space, there are many photos of real galaxies. They reveal that such processes are indeed occurring.

This is where you come in; they need volunteers to look through pictures that were taken with the robotic Sloan digital Sky Survey telescope in New Mexico and "categories" them according to there features. Most are easily classified, because it is obvious whether they are elliptical or spiral. However, some are tricky, but after going through their "training", you should be able to do it with ease. You will have to pass a test after you read through the instructions. You can take the test as many times as you need, so don't be bummed if you fail the first time. Than, you're ready to contribute to the Galaxy Zoo project. They want people to do this rather than a computer, for a few reasons. One, human brains are better at pattern recognition tasks then computers, and two there is no program they need a "base" to make one.

Galaxy Zoo started July 11 2007, as a GZ volunteer you will get to see some stunning images of galaxies. Most of them have never been seen by a human eye before, and will only be seen by few. I can only think of one word for that bitchen. Data from this project will be analyzed at Oxford University.

You can print out posters with images of galaxies, even the ones you have sorted, along with other stuff to keep it fun.