Heather asked about the SETI telescope at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, whether having its budget zeroed out mattered in any way. Had it ever found anything? Could it be re-purposed? No it hasn’t and yes it can, but I don’t care because, ma’am, I am seriously running out of patience with the whole enterprise. […]
Galaxy Zoo
The last Zooniverse project I spent time on was also their first, Galaxy Zoo 1. You looked at pictures of galaxies and decided whether they were shaped like spirals or ellipticals. I could do that, it was fun, and better yet, it was citizen science, 350,000 citizens doing real science with real scientific results, so […]
In 2007, the Galaxy Zooites — 100,000 housewives, high school students, helicopter pilots, physicians, school teachers, truck drivers, secretaries, and a mobile home park manager from all over the world – got together on the internet under the guidance of some astronomers and classified galaxies. Galaxies tend to be either spirals or ellipticals, computers are […]
On July 28, 2010, nearly 900,000 galaxies were put into a public database, and this is Galaxy #1, or SDSS J000000.41-102225.6, and don’t tell me astronomers don’t know how to name things. Galaxy #1 is probably an elliptical; the rest of the 900,000 are either ellipticals or spirals or something else, and were identified as […]