Galaxy Zoo

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Galaxy Zoo
Scientific project for volunteers
operator Galaxy Zoo team
editorial staff Galaxy Zoo team
Registration Yes
http://www.galaxyzoo.org/

Galaxy Zoo is a citizen science , online astronomy project that invites members to personally hand-classify millions of galaxies . The project was inspired by Stardust @ home , in which the public was asked by NASA to browse images from a mission to a comet. Galaxy Zoo was a collaboration between the Universities of Oxford and Portsmouth and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Fingerprint Digital Media in Belfast.

target

Galaxy Zoo members should classify galaxies into different categories: elliptical or spiral . In the case of a spiral galaxy, a distinction can be made between clockwise and counterclockwise rotation . Astronomical knowledge was not necessary for classification. In the tutorial , the volunteers were explained the differences between the types of galaxies and they could try their hand at sample images. They were able to check the correctness of their classification afterwards. It happened that images of meteorite tails appeared as contrasting colored straight lines in the image or images of a single, large, colored star could be seen.

The images of the galaxies were automatically recorded by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey using a digital camera mounted on a telescope. This telescope is at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico , USA.

It was hoped that the public classification would provide valuable information about the distribution of different types of galaxies. This would give scientists the opportunity to review and expand on current galaxy models.

Theorists believe that spiral galaxies can unite to form elliptical galaxies. Likewise, elliptical galaxies can become spiral galaxies if more gas or stars are added to them. In addition, according to Professor Michael Longo of the University of Michigan, the rotation of spiral galaxies is not accidental, as one might assume at first sight. This assumption is based on an evaluation of 1660 galaxies and has therefore not yet been proven. This would require more galaxies.

Importance of the volunteer

It turned out that computer programs were not reliably capable of automatically classifying galaxies. According to the Galaxy Zoo team member Kevin Schawinski , the human brain is much more powerful than a computer program “in this area of pattern recognition .” Without human volunteers, the researchers would have needed years to process the photographs. It is estimated that with around 10,000 to 20,000 volunteers, the process can be shortened to around 1 month.

Previously unseen pictures

Chris Lintott, another Galaxy Zoo member, commented, “One advantage is that you see images of areas of the universe that no one has ever seen before. These images were captured and processed automatically, so the first galaxy you see when you log in is one that no one else has ever seen. ”This was confirmed by Schawinski.

progress

A Galaxy Zoo newsletter dated August 2, 2007, it was found that around 80,000 volunteers had classified more than 10 million images, which far exceeded the goal of the first phase of the project.

Another goal was to “have every galaxy classified by at least 20 different users”. Multiple classification was important because it allowed the creation of a reliable database that met the high standards of the scientific community. For the first time it was possible to distinguish not only spiral from elliptical galaxies, but also spiral galaxies from more indistinct and blurred things.

The final data sets contained 34,617,406 clicks from a total of 82,931 users (meanwhile, according to the blog, 368,269, as of January 2011).

A surprising result was that more than half of the galaxies were classified as rotating counterclockwise. Due to the random orientation of the galaxies in space, the directions of rotation should be equally frequent. Thereupon a psychological reason for a preferred classification of the direction of rotation was to be excluded by presenting images in black and white or in mirror image. But it turned out that this was the cause.

Galaxy Zoo operates a forum where users can post their most eye-catching pictures.

Unofficial results and assumptions

Ring galaxies seem to be much more common than previously assumed. Only two previously known galaxies were classified as "three-legged", that is, with three spiral arms. Significantly more were found at Galaxy Zoo . Images of galaxies joining or otherwise interacting have also been classified.

There is also a “scientific blog”, an official summary of the Galaxy Zoo results to date.

Results

The most sensational single object discovered so far within the framework of Galaxy Zoo is a blue-green object, called Hanny's Voorwerp (" Hanny's object"), whose nature could only be deciphered after further research with the Hubble Space Telescope . The glow of Hannys Voorwerp can be explained by earlier active phases of the neighboring galaxy. A scientific treatise appeared on Hanny's Voorwerp in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . Hanny van Arkel, the discoverer of "Hanny's Object" is co-author of this work. In the meantime, other "voorwerpjes" (small objects) have been discovered at Galaxy Zoo. A picture with different voorwerpjes appeared as the Astronomy Picture of the Day.

The "Publications" page of Zooniverse lists 64 scientific papers for Galaxy Zoo and 8 scientific papers for Radio Galaxy Zoo, which is related to Galaxy Zoo (as of January 2020). These include a new type of compact starburst galaxies called Green Peas , which have been collected by a group of Galaxy Zoo volunteers. This group called themselves the Pea Corps, a reference to the Peace Corps ( Peace Corps of the United States).

Galaxy Zoo 2

After Galaxy Zoo was completed, "Galaxy Zoo 2" started after a long beta test on February 17th, 2009.

Galaxy Zoo 2 goes a step further in classification. 250,000 of the brightest galaxies are included in this project, which are classified according to shape, number of spiral arms, appearance of the center (bars or not, center shines almost not at all to excessively strong) and other features. There is also a possibility to mark “oddities” in the picture. This project also contains less poor quality photos.

After Galaxy Zoo 2 was also completed, Galaxy Zoo launched Hubble, with images from the Hubble Space Telescope . From this point on, more and more projects about the Zooniverse family were published.

Zooniverse

Zooniverse is a citizen science portal that emerged from the original Galaxy Zoo project. It includes several projects that allow users to independently participate in scientific projects such as astronomy or climatology. In contrast to other internet-based scientific projects, such as SETI @ home , which uses the free computing power to analyze data, the Zooniverse project uses the active participation of real people to complete research. As of January 4, 2020, the community consisted of approximately 1.9 million registered volunteers, with 455 million classifications.

Projects

About 100 projects are currently active on the Zooniverse website (as of January 2020). Including from the subjects of biology , astronomy , languages, nature and art . The individual projects can be divided into "organizations" by a scientific group. There is the Notes from Nature organization , supported by the National Science Foundation . This organization primarily has texts from natural history museums transcribed. In addition to universities and other research institutions, internationally known organizations also run Zooniverse projects. Thus the funded NASA project Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 , which is funded until the 2020th The project searches for brown dwarfs and the hypothetical planet nine . The ESA is participating in the project Hubble Asteroid Hunter , the images from the Hubble Space Telescope used to search for asteroids.

Zooniverse tries to solve the big data problem, i.e. the processing of large amounts of data, with the help of classifications by volunteers. Environmental projects produce hundreds of terabytes of data annually . Likewise, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory (LSST) will produce 30 terabytes of data per night. These amounts of data cannot be checked manually. The volunteers will only classify part of the data, which will then train a machine-learned algorithm. This algorithm will later classify the data independently and at the same time the algorithm will be improved by further classifications by volunteers on Zooniverse.

(partly inactive) projects:

Projects description
Galaxy Zoo Hubble The final embodiment of the original Galaxy Zoo project. It includes the classification of hundreds of thousands of galaxies by the NASA space telescope. The project includes all kinds of galaxies, from elliptical galaxies, spiral galaxies to irregular galaxies.
Galaxy Zoo Mergers The analysis of mergers of huge galaxies aims to find out more about the interaction between galaxies. (No longer active or integrated into another project.)
Galaxy Zoo Supernovae Busy with the search for supernovae . (No longer active or integrated into another project.)
Moon zoo High-resolution images of the lunar surface provided by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter are reviewed by volunteers to mark craters and other features.
Old Weather The users use a special interface to digitize old weather data from warships from the First World War . The information is used to improve climate models.
Solar Stormwatch The project uses data from the 2 twin space probes STEREO to record the formation and development of solar storms and to predict their arrival on earth.
Planet Hunters Data from the Kepler Space Telescope is used to find extrasolar planets.
The Milky Way Project The project deals with the recognition of bubbles, which are said to be the birthplaces of young stars. The project uses infrared images from the Spitzer telescope .
Ice Hunters Identification of objects from the Kuiper Belt known as KBOs for the potential future targets of the New Horizons spacecraft . Variable stars and asteroids can also be discovered or marked. The helpers on this project look at subtracting two images of the same section of sky to mark the objects as white dots in the image.
Ancient Lives Digitization of Oxyrhynchus Papyri
Whale Analysis of the sounds of whales to explore their language
Seafloor Explorer Analysis of species on seabed photos to create a database of species and habitats along the northeast coast
Bat detective Classification of bat calls
Cell slider Collaboration with Cancer Research UK to classify cancer cells
Cyclone Center Classification of Tropical Storms
Notes from Nature Digitizing the classification of plants and insects.
Space warps Identification of galaxies that serve as gravitational lenses .

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Galaxy Zoo Team
  2. Galaxy Zoo opens , inthenews.com. July 11, 2007. Archived from the original on July 13, 2007. Retrieved July 12, 2007. 
  3. Galaxy Zoo - The Science, page 1 ( Memento from January 11, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  4. Galaxy Zoo - The Science, page 2 ( Memento from January 19, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  5. a b See new galaxies - without leaving your chair , nature.com. July 11, 2007. Retrieved July 12, 2007. 
  6. Astronomers Seek Aid for Galactic Census ( Memento from July 7, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  7. ^ Scientists seek galaxy hunt help , BBC News. July 11, 2007. Retrieved July 12, 2007. 
  8. Later, due to the continued enthusiasm of the user community, the number of users was even increased to 30.
  9. three legged well defined spiral galaxy
  10. Biggest cosmic trainwrecks - Mergers
  11. Galaxy Zoo blogs
  12. Galaxy Zoo's blue mystery (part I)
  13. Hubblesite.org
  14. Chris J. Lintott, Kevin Schawinski, William Keel, Hanny van Arkel, Nicola Bennert: Galaxy Zoo: `Hanny's Voorwerp ', a quasar light echo? In: MNRAS . tape 399 , no. 1 , October 2009, ISSN  0035-8711 , p. 129–140 , doi : 10.1111 / j.1365-2966.2009.15299.x ( harvard.edu [accessed January 4, 2020]).
  15. APOD: 2015 April 4 - Voorwerpjes in Space. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  16. ^ Publications. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  17. Carolin Cardamone, Kevin Schawinski, Marc Sarzi, Steven P. Bamford, Nicola Bennert: Galaxy Zoo Green Peas: discovery of a class of compact extremely star-forming galaxies . In: MNRAS . tape 399 , no. 3 , November 2009, ISSN  0035-8711 , p. 1191–1205 , doi : 10.1111 / j.1365-2966.2009.15383.x ( harvard.edu [accessed January 4, 2020]).
  18. Zooniverse . Archived from the original on October 12, 2011. Retrieved January 1, 2012.
  19. Zooniverse. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  20. ^ Projects - Zooniverse. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  21. ^ Notes from Nature - Zooniverse. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  22. Author marckuchner2014: We Love You! And Happy Anniversary! In: Backyard Worlds: Planet February 9, 14, 2018, accessed January 4, 2020 .
  23. Foreground asteroid passing the Crab Nebula. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  24. Mapping the universe at 30 terabytes a night • The Register. Retrieved January 4, 2020 .
  25. Lucy Fortson, Darryl Wright, Chris Lintott, Laura Trouille: Optimizing the Human-Machine Partnership with Zooniverse . In: arXiv . September 2018, p. arXiv: 1809.09738 ( harvard.edu [accessed January 4, 2020]).
  26. galaxies . RAS . June 2, 2010. Retrieved August 24, 2011.
  27. New food for amateur astronomers . February 17, 2009. Retrieved January 6, 2012.
  28. Galactic collision game . November 25, 2009. Retrieved August 23, 2011. 
  29. Supernova . Retrieved January 6, 2012. 
  30. NASA invites the public to take a virtual walk on the moon . NASA . May 11, 2010. Retrieved August 23, 2011.
  31. NASA's Kepler Mission . NASA . August 12, 2011. Retrieved August 23, 2011.
  32. Spitzer's Milky Way! . JPL . December 7, 2010. Retrieved August 23, 2011.
  33. Milky Way Project . Retrieved January 6, 2012. 
  34. Notes from nature