Galaxy Zoo was started in July of 2007. NSS Phoenix first posted about Galaxy Zoo in June of 2008.

Hundreds of thousands of human eyeballs have yielded research results. One of the most recent peer-reviewed publications Galaxy Zoo Green Peas: Discovery of A Class of Compact Extremely Star-Forming Galaxies was published 7 September 2009 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc.), and the Abstract was published on the Galaxy Zoo Forum. The Abstract begins: “We investigate a class of rapidly growing emission line galaxies, known as “Green Peas,” first noted by volunteers in the Galaxy Zoo project because of their peculiar bright green colour and small size, unresolved in SDSS imaging.”

The newest project is the dynamics of Galaxy Mergers. Once you register and login, you are presented with the Current Target of merging galaxies.Your task is to watch sample mergers played out dynamically and select one if it appears similar to the target. As the website makes clear: This one takes a lot of patience. However, if you look at enough states, eventually you will get solutions that are close. So click on “Take Me There” and get started.

Credit: Galaxy Zoo (Creative Commons License).

Credit: Galaxy Zoo (Creative Commons License).

In the center of the screen is your target merger. When you click on “More”, eight new simulations will be run, one at a time in each box. The “Animate” check box in the upper right shows the actual collision, rather than just the end result. If none of the collisions look like the target, then skip them and click on “More” again. If you find a collision that resembles the target, click on the simulation and it will be added to the “Selected Sims” panel on the right. Remember, not selecting a simulation is just as important as selecting one. It lets the Galaxy Zoo researchers know that a particular set of conditions will not produce the target merger. Once you have found a candidate, you can refine the simulation. Click on the “Enhance” tab.

To the left is an image of the Enhance screen for mergers. First, select the simulation from the right hand panel (double click). Then, you can “Add More Stars” and watch the simulation at greater detailNow the fun begins. You can adjust the orientation of the simulation by click and hold on the image and drag. Although the target merger can only be seen from the orientation shown, the sim can be rotated in three dimensions. There are a lot of variables to play with: Mass, Velocity, Depth, Size, Angles 1 and Angles 2. You can flip the galaxies. For a detailed description of these variables, see the instructions. Once you have the collision as close as possible, click on “Save Sim”. Adjustments are tricky and even slight variations in a variable can produce wildly divergent results.

Credit: Galaxy Zoo (Creative Commons License).

Happy Mergers.

At the Citizen Science workshop, hosted last week by the Galaxy Zoo project, two of the people taking part were actual, real, citizen scientists. Both had careers outside science but had been drawn back into study through their involvement with the project. They were lovely, enthusiastic people and completely involved in Galaxy Zoo, spending long hours not just classifying the galaxies but helping to run the forum, gather material for papers, initiate new developments in the project and more.

They both said was that they liked being ‘zooites’ because they felt valued as collaborators, not used as ‘computers’ – that they were really ‘sharing in the science’. And also, most interestingly for me, that they felt those things because the  stuff they were doing is good science.

If citizens are going to devote time and energy to a project, they have to feel it’s worthwhile. No one likes to feel used or relegated to being a mere resource. Citizen scientists, like any other scientists, want to know that the research is hypothesis-driven and that the results matter. Science is driven by questions and citizen science is no different to any other kind.

If you are looking to become a citizen scientist there is no better way  than a to go the Galaxy Zoo web site and become a  ”zooite”.  My graduate level Astronomy for Teachers class was lucky enough to have an introduction to the project from one of the Galaxy Zoo researchers Georgia Bracey.

Georgia Bracey explaining Galaxy Zoo

More than 150,000 people have taken part in Galaxy Zoo so far, producing a wealth of valuable data and sending telescopes on Earth and in space chasing after their discoveries. Zoo 2 focuses on the nearest, brightest and most beautiful galaxies. The newest project added is the HUNT FOR SUPERNOVAE . If your lucky , you could also be one of the people to be to discover whole new classes of objects like “Hanny’s Voorwerp” or the “Green Peas Galaxies“

Hanny's Voorwerp (Green Object)

"Green Pea" Galaxies

I’m really digging the Galaxy Zoo web application. This site, and its partner site Galaxy Zoo Supernovae, harnesses the power of hordes of astronomy geeks to classify galaxies or supernovae. It has that sort of Mechanical Turk vibe to it with the reward of science.  So very cool in theory.

And in practice, also cool. Given that we’re not all professional astronomers (or trained astronomers), the site divides up the classification process into a series of steps where the choices are a set of buttons with graphics. As you complete each step, the image button is added to the list below the current choices. So you can see the decisions that you’ve made and return to a previous step easily. The interface is simple and intuitive.

Classification Steps

Even better, there’s a separate page that provides practice sets for each of the steps:

Practice sets

So you can see examples of each of the options as you work. It also keeps track of the galaxies you’ve classified and save your favorites. All in all, an excellent time suck. Although the supernovae classifier is really quite hard.

Interested in being a citizen scientist? Want to help astronomers classify the shapes of galaxies in order to help understand how galaxies throughout the universe formed?

More than 150,000 people have taken part in Galaxy Zoo so far, producing a wealth of valuable data and sending telescopes on Earth and in space chasing after their discoveries. Zoo 2 focuses on the nearest, brightest and most beautiful galaxies, so to begin exploring the Universe, click the ‘How To Take Part’ link above, or read ‘The Story So Far’ to find out what Galaxy Zoo has achieved to date.

Well, Galaxy Zoo 2 offers you the opportunity to contribute to such goals, while having the chance to see some amazing pictures of galaxies. The project has already amassed images of over a quarter of a million galaxies, from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) using an optical telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, which need to be classified according to a series of relatively simple criteria. What amounts to be a basic task for a human, is an assignment that a computer has a very difficult time accomplishing; that’s where you come in, the citizen scientist! If you’re interested in participating, merely click on the picture above in order to get started.

The Galaxy Zoo is a neat little site with a long list of prestigious universities behind its development. It harnesses the power of human cognition to allow users to look at pictures of galaxies and classify them for future research. Humans are way, way better at this visual processing tasks than computers, as it turns out.

The site itself is easy to use. You register, look at a one-page tutorial, and then you are off, counting the arms of spiral galaxies and flagging unusual astronomical features in photos. The bulk of the galaxies I classified were smooth and dull, but that just made the occasional brilliant spiraling galaxy more exciting. There is an option to check if you see anything unusual – I daydream that when I press this option a fleet of goggle-wearing scientists in lab coats receive an emergency page and scurry to a computer to see the anomaly.

This is a great game for wasting time – just fun enough to hold my attention and easy enough a child could do it. In fact, in a Scientific American podcast (click here to listen) with Yale astrophysicist Kevin Schawinski, one of the project’s creators, Schaminski said that was one of the great things about the Galaxy Zoo – parents get online and classify galaxies with their children, getting them excited about scientific research.

The Galaxy Zoo isn’t the only project out there that harnesses the power of the internet and the human brain. Called human-based computation, these projects usually seek to accomplish what otherwise might have been the world’s worst temp job and turn the task into a game shared by a huge network of people. The ESP Game makes image search engines work better by having two players look at an image and guess what descriptive words the other player uses to tag the image. The tags that the players agree on then become associated with the image and improve its searchability. 

Can you count the spiral arms? Of course, you are a human.

ReCAPTCHA is the bookworm cousin of CAPTCHA, those annoying squiggling letter tests that verify your humanity for all sorts of online activities. ReCAPTCHA puts a handwritten word already known to the computer alongside a untagged word from manuscript. The user types both in, verifying their humanity and coding word in a manuscript in one fell swoop. Best part is, putting reCAPTCHA on your site is free. Although perhaps both CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA might fall into disuse if Slate’s Chris Wilson is correct that increasingly sophisticated bots are learning to read these images as well as humans – or, possibly, that spammers get around this security measure simply by outsourcing the human cognition overseas.

Some of these sites will even pay the human workers. The Amazon Mechanical Turk is the only one I am prepared to say is not a scam. Not a get-rich-quick scheme by any means, but you can put your human brain to work and earn yourself a few Amazon dollars through this site.

If you are looking to tap the power of your computer rather than your brain, a list of active distributed computing projects that use a portion of your computers CPU can be found on Wikipedia here.

With everything going on this year, I have been pretty bad about star-gazing regularly.  Then the last time I went, I took pictures of Saturn that were so bad I am far too embarrassed to share them… but that’s a separate issue.  Imagine my excitement when I read about this:

GALAXY ZOO

I initially read about the project in Natural History magazine.

So cool!

I’ve been a huge fan of Wired’s GeekDad blog since it launched two years ago, so seeing my name up there as a guest poster is a ridiculously cool thrill! Thanks to editor Ken Denmead for giving me the shot.

And though I missed it due to traveling and spending some fantastic time with the extended family, Galaxy Zoo easily surpassed its cosmic classification goal – update: Here’s the site’s blog about the millionth click – but the effort’s still rolling at 1.6 million and counting.

Well, thank the heavens for Bad Astronomy, because, you know, there just aren’t enough ways to kill time on the internet, right?

It took me all of two seconds to decide I wanted to play a small part in Galaxy Zoo’s quest for one million galaxy classification clicks during the 100 Hours of Astronomy – and if you’re reading this before April 5, 2009, then You’re Soaking In It -  and, as Phil Plait promised, it’s crazy addictive. I stopped after 22 classifications just to come over and bang this out, and then I’m headed back.

So far, this one’s my favorite:

This is the sort of thing that never ceases to thrill and humble and quake me: Think of it – that smudge, there. That’s a freaking GALAXY. It’s a real place out there. It’s uncounted stars and solar systems. It exists. It’s possible to be there. It’s not just dots or light, but an actual physical occupant of this universe, that galaxy and its suns and possible planets.

I’d better stop or I’m not sleeping anytime soon.

C’est le nouveau défi proposé par le projet Galaxy Zoo grâce auquel vous (oui, vous, l’amateur!) pouvez aider les astronomes à classifier les galaxies!

Je vous avais parlé un peu de mon goût pour les civilisations anciennes du Proche-orient, et bien voici quelque chose d’autre: je aussi férue d’astronomie (et, accessoirement. d’astrophysique et de physique quantique). Si j’avais été bonne en maths, j’en aurais fait mon métier car c’est passionnant. En attendant je donne un peu de mon temps (5 minutes par jour suffisent!) comme des milliers d’autres internautes pas du tout spécialisés dans le domaine. Le but: analyser des photos de galaxies et les classifier.

Une sélection de mes favoris

Galaxy Zoo: qu’est-ce que c’est?

Galaxy Zoo est un projet scientifique faisant appel au public (les “Zooites”) afin de classifier un million de galaxies. Pourquoi faire appel à des personnes plutôt qu’aux ordinateurs? La réponse est simple: le cerveau humain est bien plus qualifié pour analyser et classer des images qu’un ordinateur, et bien plus rapide! Les galaxies sont des objets complexes, d’apparence très variables et parfois aussi très similaires. Les essais réalisés jusqu’ici avec des programmes informatiques n’ont pas été concluants: les ordinateurs font beaucoup d’erreurs.

Pourquoi faire?

La classification des galaxies est la première étape du projet. On sait aujourd’hui que les galaxies sont une donnée majeure de la compréhension de l’univers, qu’elles évoluent au cours de leur existence, qu’elles ne sont pas réparties équitablement dans l’univers et qu’elles se regroupent souvent avec leurs semblables. Cette classification va permettre de mieux comprendre comment les galaxies s’organisent, en fonction de leur forme, de leur âge, de déterminer la structure de l’Univers et peut-être aussi, la manière dont celui-ci s’est formé et d’accréditer ou de réfuter l’hypothèse du Big Bang.

Le projet a permis de mettre en évidence le fait que les galaxies-anneau sont plus répandues qu'on ne le pensait, ainsi que les spirales avec un nombre de bras impair...

Comment ça marche?

Après inscription, le candidat à la classification passe un petit test accompagné d’un tutoriel afin de vérifier qu’il est bien en mesure de faire ce travail: je vous rassure, c’est simplissime! Ensuite il peut commencer tout de suite à classifier les galaxies en fonction de leur forme: on ne vous demande rien de plus que de les classer en fonction de leur apparence! En cas de doute, il suffit de se fier à son instinct et surtout ne pas bloquer sur une image car même si on se trompe, ce n’est pas grave! La même image sera soumise à des milliers d’autres personnes et le programme prendra en compte les réponses de la majorité. Si on est vraiment pontilleux il suffit de demander de l’aide sur le forum en copiant le lien de l’image. Pour les plus fêlés, il est possible de consulter des données plus précises comme le spectre de l’astre observé- c’est comme cela qu’on tombe parfois sur un quasar…

Voila comment se présente la chose...

Quel intérêt?

Pour nous, simplement la satisfaction de participer à un projet scientifique d’envergure et la possibilité de visionner de superbes images de galaxies…celles-ci sont parfois d’une beauté renversante ou tellement curieuses qu’on les met dans ses favoris. Egalement, Galaxy Zoo publie une fois par an un poster d’honneur sur lequel votre nom peut figurer, si vous le souhaitez.

La première version était très épurée, le but était surtout de déterminer quelle était la  proportion de galaxies spirales orientées dans le sens et à l’inverse des aiguilles d’une montre. Mais les observations ont permis d’aller plus loin et de mettre en évidence un grand nombre de galaxies anneaux, de spirales à 1,3, ou 5 bras , de galaxies irrégulières et la présence de mystérieux pois verts…sans oublier le fameux “Hanny Vorveerp”, l’étrange objet trouvé par une participante, Hanny.

A votre centième classification vous pourrez accéder en exclusivité à Google Sky (via Google Earth), une nouvelle fonctionnalité inédite permettant de visualiser des galaxies!

Les astronomes communiquent beaucoup sur le forum et le blog par la voix du chef de projet Chris Lintott et font savoir régulièrement l’état d’avancement du projet, les analyses qu’ils peuvent tirer des résultats, et expriment leur gratitude.

Si cela vous tente, n’hésitez plus!  Le défi de la semaine consiste à visionner 1 million d’images pour booster le projet. Il ne reste plus que 5 jours pour classifier un million de galaxies. A l’heure où j’écris ces lignes, le compteur indique 280614

Galaxy Zoo

Le blog

Galaxy Zoo is a fascinating online project that is a mix of social media, citizen science and space exploration. The project’s goal is to document and classify Galaxies. People are an integral part of the project because computers are  inaccurate in identifying subtle differences  in galaxies and pattern recognition. The project’s website teaches basic Galaxy identification skills and then sends its users off into the great beyond to view and document previously taken images of space via robotic telescope.

In August 2007 the project announced having 80,000 (Now over 150,000) members that had analyzed and recorded over 10 million images of galaxies. The project has even lead to the discovery of unique space objects such as Hanny’s Voorwerp and has helped in the creation of over seven scientific papers about the collected data.

The project is a great example of a technique called crowdsourcing which is the act of assigning a task to a large group of people or community rather than an employee base to cut costs and achieve quicker results. Crowdsourcing is often powered by web 2.0 technology and contributes and enables a lot of the New Media world to exist.  Crowdsourcing can be observed in several popular web-based companies and organizations such as Threadless, Wikipedia, 99designs and Zeros to Heroes Media.

Be an astronomer!

We found a cool website called Galazy Zoo where you can help astronomers identify and classify real galaxies! We have blogged about Galaxy Zoo before, but now they improved and updated the website. It is now easier and more exciting to help scientists classify galaxies.

Dive into outerspace from your home computer and learn about how a galaxy is formed, types of galaxies, and what they look like.

What types of galaxies do you see in these pictures?

Elliptical, Spiral, or Irregular?

Galaxy zoo: un zoo dans l’espace

(Agence Science-Presse) – Grandes ou petites, lumineuses ou sombre, rondes ou ovoïdes, bleues ou rouges… Il existe une multitude de différences entre les galaxies. Tout comme les naturalistes classent les êtres vivants, les astronomes cherchent à mettre un peu d’ordre dans ce zoo sidéral. Et comme le cerveau humain est plus performant que l’ordinateur, ils ont lancé Galaxy Zoo, un projet de science participative qui convie le public à classifier les galaxies en deux grandes familles : les ellipses et les spirales. À partir des images du télescope Sloan Digital Sky Survey, les participants ont le privilège d’observer des galaxies qu’aucun œil humain n’a jamais vues. En un an, Galaxy Zoo a déjà réuni 150 000 participants et classifié plus de 50 millions de galaxies.

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Let’s think big today – real big!

Much of the information I collect to write on here comes from the internet. I don’t need to go into detail on what an incredibly useful tool the internet is, but when I find a site that’s interesting it goes into a pool of random links that I sort out later. The other day I was sorting through this omni-growing list I came across something I had bookmarked for a very interesting reason. The project is called KEO and its mission is no less than to put a bunch of messages in a winged satellite orbiting Earth for 50,000 years so as to preserve the present perspective of the world for the future. I’m already certain future historians are thrilled.

KEO Satellite

Seriously though, this idea is really going to happen in 2009/2010 (or so the site says, somewhere else I noticed this was planned as early as 2006). And I just thought how novel it would be if I contributed to it. The impact of me on anyone from the future on trying to decipher through the depths of time what I try to say about our whole world in 4 pages was too enticing of a possibility to pass up – even though at the time I didn’t feel like getting real philosophical. So when I came upon this link the other day, I knew it was now or never, I needed to contribute to this ridiculous (yet novel!) idea.

The truth is this idea was really well thought out, at least from a practical perspective. If we were going to launch a time capsule into space we might as well also collect data on it. And so in any language everybody, even you, gets the chance to write 4 pages of your current world view. They will then be made anonymous and studied by some people of knowledge – for some interesting data on current world views around the entire globe.  This sounds like a privilege beyond measure to be given the opportunity – and it is – but at the same time my brain just cannot fathom the chances of anybody ever actually reading it again 50,000 years and beyond. And even if they do – the ability to grasp 50,000 year old language might not be very accurate. So I felt a little foolish writing it – but I encourage it anyway – at least for the practical purposes of the experiment. And lucky you, you guys get a 50,000 year preview of what I’ve got to say for these guys:

I can’t imagine a circumstance where somebody is reading this 50,000+ years in the future. The thought of being ancient currently is hard to grasp. We live in a time of great wealth and prosperity, yet we are on a precipice of a collapse.

Our species has created a global empire that has become so efficient in just a mere 10,000 years that we now hold the power to destroy all life on this planet. This technology was discovered less than 100 years ago and is capable of destroying entire cities, and already has.

Our population is teeming and growing at an unprecedented rate. The value of human life is declining. The value of all life is declining. Our empire has become so large that we have become unsustainable. We are consuming resources without regard to longevity or sustainability.

We are a lonely species. We cannot find another species with equal intellect and so we attempt to conquer our world. From the snowy Arctic and Antarctic in the North and South to the tropical equator wrapping around the world East and West we attempt to conquer and manipulate all. We put resources and other living beings to use for our material benefit.

We have created such material wealth, yet we are more desperate and unhappy than we’ve ever been in the history of the world. Slavery is more rampant. Extinction of species is a daily occurrence. Our need for a diverse planet for survival is slowly coming to a collapse and this will make mankind desperate. And when we are desperate we are a scary thing to behold.

I’d be surprised if humans are the recipients of this KEO project in 50,000 years. Perhaps an entirely newly evolved species might find it in 2 million. Perhaps extraterrestrials will find it in 40,000 years. Most likely this message will die in the bowels of the Earth or be destroyed along with the planet.

Writing in this almost seems useless. But there is a chance somebody not from our time will read this and it may convey important knowledge or wisdom.

For the last 2,000 years most of the humans on this planet decided to believe that there is 1 single omniscient and omnipotent being that will judge our behavior after we have died. This is believed entirely on faith and with no factual evidence to back it up. The stunning thing is that these humans constantly war over the best way to worship this omniscient and omnipotent being. Some of us don’t like to pretend we know what happens after we die – but we’re in the minority, and those who believe can become upset.

We have come up with almost any material possession imaginable yet we are still unhappy. Those nations with high material wealth show great signs of depression when too focused on materialism. However, materials make one useful and wealthy. Pride and greed overrule good judgment in dealing with materialism, it is a very tricky beast to tame.

Outside of the planet we believe we are alone because nobody has contacted us and we have found nobody. We have spent large amounts of money at looking for somebody, anybody out in space and we have found nobody. We know there are other uninhabited planets around a giant natural furnace that is constantly fusing hydrogen into helium at a very high temperature. We know the Universe has an end and we know the Universe began all in one spot. We know the Universe is governed by a few natural laws and these have all been scientifically proven. Unfortunately, we don’t know what it all means and we get frustrated all the time about it.

Despite our obvious faults we have amazing talents. Many of us have overcome terrible odds to be a source of inspiration, positive action, and progressive thinking. Issues that concern the entire planet as well as local communities are our source of motivation, but greed and miscommunication tend to muddy things up. We play some of the most beautiful music in the Universe – I’m certain of that. We love art and expression. We pursue knowledge and wisdom. But the battle is seemingly to be lost to the ignorant.

For the last 10,000 years our society has slowly grown across the entire world. As it grew it had great periods of growth as well as great periods of depression. We are just ending this great period of growth, and this time it has left us with the knowledge and power to wipe out all life on this planet. When this imminent depression takes root I am afraid that this KEO project will not see the light of day by any future species of any race. Earth may be as cold and dead as her neighbors.

I totally screwed with the future’s head because instead of writing “few natural resources” I wrote “future natural resources” [I had the future on my mind I guess]. Luckily I found it before I posted it on here, but too bad for the future. So by all means put your own take down and write your vision of our world and share it with our chronological neighbors!

Galaxy Zoo

Now that we have thought about the future for a bit, let’s think a bit about the past (we’re thinking big today!) and turn our eyes towards galaxies out in space. In my entry on the Universe I wrote about a site known as Galaxy Zoo where you get to help astronomers collect data on the millions of galaxies that dot our skies. Well good news! Since then they have updated and now have a more comprehensive survey in which they still need your help! They call it Galaxy Zoo 2, but it’s still located at galaxyzoo.org.

Why should you do this? Some people would view looking at these pictures as “just” a galaxy and if that’s the case for you, then you need to think more 3 dimensionally and bring some reality to life. Each galaxy you look at could contain thousands of life sustaining planets with all sorts of species and cultures that we may never see. And theres just a chance someone is looking at us back. But also this helps astronomers organize and collect data about our Universe!

The only real argument against spending this kind of time and effort on things like the future and the Universe is that it’s “impractical” in the sense that these are age-old things people have obsessed about and have not found any real answers – just more questions. But both the future and the Universe are our unknowns – every time I let it affect me I get stunned at exactly what we’re doing – literally floating through space that is large beyond measure – and you have to take some time to understand your direct relationship with that. Every part of your body at one point was in a star. We are a carbon-based life form and carbon, as well as every other natural element, was forged deep in the furnaces of stars in space. What the Universe is thinking is anybodys guess – but you should spend time thinking/learning about space and time because they govern us absolutely. And you should promote others to spend a little time thinking/learning about it as well.

Since I’m on the topic of space today I’m going to share a couple of recent space-related articles to show that the Universe is something that is always busy (despite looking identical each night) and always giving us something to think about.

Picture of Comet Lulin

Comet Lulin is going to be at its brightest this week (the last week of February 2009) and is something that you can see with binoculars. If it’s clear one of these nights I’m definitely going to go check it out – even though it’s goddamn February and everybody’s tapping their toe for Spring around here. Also, for the record, a comet is not a meteor, asteroid, or a star.

A star – is a giant nuclear fusion factory that it’s so hot it glows – not burns. Burning is a chemical reaction and stars are nuclear reactions. Most of the stars are constantly taking hydrogen and fusing it to become helium at a temperature of millions of degrees. The sun is a star. Though this is what happens like 99% of the time, as I’ve said before, stars create all the other elements that we find on this planet and everywhere else in the Universe. Stars are simply element factories radiating energy and heat.

A meteor – is also known as a shooting star. But that’s a lie – stars travel but they do not shoot. Meteors aren’t far out in space like a star is. Meteors are space rocks that enter into the Earth’s frictional (not fictional – note the difference) atmosphere and burn up as they become victim to Earth’s gravity. If this meteor survives its burn to the Earth and is still big enough to find – it’s called a meteorite. Hunting for meteorites is a really big passion and can even be profitable because they are a rare find, yet they are all over the Earth. In fact, if you live in the southwestern United States you are in one of the prime hunting zones for meteorites. Personally I have always been fascinated with the Sahara desert so this story of a Libyan Sahara Meteorite Expedition really caught my interest. And it really gives you insight about both meteorites and the desert. Before a meteor enters our atmosphere it is known as a meteoroid. They tend to be anywhere from as small as a piece of sand to as large as a boulder. Both the Earth and the Moon have been pummelled with meteors their whole life. So if a meteorite on the ground is the result of a meteor in the sky and the meteor is the result of a meteoroid from space – where does the meteor come from?

A Comet – That’s right. Meteoroids come from comets. Now a comet, like Comet Lulin, all orbit the sun like the Earth and the rest of the planets. The difference is they are balls of rock and ice (the ice could be water, methane, ammonia, or whatever) and they have a very elliptical orbit. While the Earth’s orbit around the sun is not a perfect circle, the comets orbit will go in closer to the sun than Mercury’s orbit as well as shoot well outside the orbits of our outermost known planets. For years, sometimes centuries, comets sit dark and quiet at the lonely edge of our solar system with the sun nothing larger than a speck in the distance. But when the comet comes into its inner orbit and comes close to the sun the volatile ice begins to dissipate off the comet giving it a very distinct tail.  This is why you should go take a look at Lulin, comets bedazzle many who pay attention to our heavens. The comet Hale Bopp was famous for inciting the suicides of dozens. Anyway, in respect to the tail – this is the visible debree that the comet is releasing at any point it starts entering the inner Solar System and so (like humans) it leaves a trail of trash wherever it goes – including right through Earth’s future orbit. Most of the debris that’s left behind from a comet is called a meteoroid – so that is how meteoroids come from comets. Every year when we travel through these comet orbits you can sit outside and watch the sky replenish meteorite hunter’s dreams. These are known as meteor showers.

An Asteroid – If it’s not a meteoroid, if it’s not a comet, and if it’s not a planet or a star, yet it still lies within our Solar System, it’s most likely an asteroid. And asteroids are pretty serious dudes. The inner planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars – were forged through catastrophic collisions of behemoth rocks.  As these inner planets cleared most of these rocks away  there is an area between Mars and Jupiter where many rocks – some the size of small planets – lay in wait for their collision that will unify its substantial size to a more massive entity. Comets are more predictable because they travel alone and light up making it easy to calculate their orbit and determine whether it is a threat to our precious Earth. Asteroids give us no such warning. While science has done a lot on the grounds of tracking things in our Solar System there are just too many asteroids with too much of an unpredictable orbit to know. Astronomers are always on vigil for an asteroid coming within the Earth’s orbit – but even so – little could be done if a sizeable one was calculated to run into the Earth.  What are the chances? You might ask. Take a look at this asteroid simulation in HD from the Discovery Channel. This video is of what would happen to Earth if a 310 mile wide asteroid hit the Earth. The initial impact alone (when it hits the Pacific) peels off 6 miles of the Earths crust and sends it flying into space. Science has found at least 6 major asteroids have hit the Earth since existence. I don’t have to be a scientist to tell you that is only the ones we can prove – asteroids are memory erasers of anything that occurred before impact – and the Earth has probably been hit many more times than that. An asteroid is just one of the many reasons why it felt a little silly to write in the KEO project. After all, there is a slight chance the Earth could be hit by an asteroid in 2036, but most scientists don’t think that will occur.

Artist representation of what is going on during a Gamma Ray Burst - dont ask me

Lastly I wanted to mention a recent record that has been broken in the Universe. A couple of times every week we detect these massive explosions from deep space. What we do know is that they are bursts of gamma rays which are extremely powerful and luminescent. Hence their name: Gamma Ray Bursts. What we don’t know is what causes them. Because of their luminosity astronomers believe they can only be associated with the destruction of massive stars in the Universe. But the reality of the situation is we have no clue. Gamma Ray Bursts are incredibly short – anywhere from less than a second to a little over a minute – but multiple times more bright than any star. This means that while we are unable to see the star in which it originated, we are able to see the burst itself, before it disappears into the murky depths of space.

Well last year astronomers detected the largest Gamma Ray Burst in the history of recording the event from Earth. Gamma Ray Bursts are already the most energetic things in the Universe, so how bright and powerful was this GRB? Well it occurred 12.2 billion light years away (which means the site of this explosion has been travelling for 12.2 BILLION years at the speed of light to deliver us this impressive show of radiation. Scientists have explained that if 9,000 supernovas were to explode that only then would there be equal brightness to the Gammar Ray Burst that was discovered last year. So what are these Gamma Ray Bursts about? We have to study them more to find out… but this is our mother – up there in the sky. That black void with it’s cold, dark, magnificent, enigmatic, and lonely eye gave birth to you – gave birth to us all. It forged things other than hydrogen and helium into being. We should all spend some time appreciating, understanding, and respecting out Universe. Its size alone demands respect.

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Galaxy Zoo: Zweite Runde gestartet (gulli:news)

Está no ar a nova página do Galazy Zoo, um projeto em que qualquer pessoa pode ajudar a Astronomia classificando galáxias.

As galáxias são imensos sistemas compostos por bilhões de estrelas. A Terra, os planetas, o Sol e as estrelas que vemos à noite fazem parte da nossa Galáxia, a Via Láctea, que é apenas uma das bilhões de galáxias no Universo.

As galáxias podem ter diferentes formas: algumas, como a Via Láctea, são espirais, enquanto outras são elípticas. Ainda há aquelas que não apresentam estrutura bem definida, e são classificadas como irregulares. Todas tem algo em comum: estão muito distantes de nós, e por isso são invisíveis a olho nu (com algumas raras exceções). Estudando as galáxias, os astrônomos procuram entender melhor como elas se formam e evoluem, e assim compreender melhor a origem e funcionamento do  Universo.

Por serem muito numerosas, o estudo dessas galáxias está sempre carente de mão de obra. É aí que entra o Galaxy Zoo: após se cadastrar no site e fazer um pequeno tutorial, o internauta já está apto a classificar esses objetos, analisando imagens reais do Universo. É um esforço coletivo, de pessoas do mundo inteiro com as mais variadas formações, movidas pela curiosidade e amor pela Astronomia.

A professora primária holandesa Hanny van Arkel descobriu o estranho objeto esverdeado acima usando o Galaxy Zoo.

As oportunidades de descoberta são muito vastas: em 2007, uma professora holandesa identificou através do Galaxy Zoo um tipo de objeto até então desconhecido, o Hanny’s Voorwerp (“objeto de Hanny” em holandês). Ainda não há consenso sobre o que a misteriosa mancha verde possa ser; especula-se que seja uma nuvem de gás refletindo a luz de um quasar distante 700 milhões de anos luz da Terra.

Participe também deste interessante projeto! Quem sabe você não será o próximo a descobrir algo novo no céu!

Someone told me
It’s all happening at the Zoo.

I do believe it
I do believe it’s true.

It’s a light and tumble journey
From your homepage to the site,
Just a fine and fancy ramble
To the Zoo.

And you can take your own computer
If it’s raining or it’s cold
And the scientists will love it
If you do.

Something tells me
It’s all happening at the Zoo.

The spirals stand for honesty
S-noughts are insincere
Irregulars are kindly but
They’re weird.
Ellipticals are skeptical
Of changes in their profiles
And the Zookeeper is very fond of rum.

Mergers are reactionaries
AGN are missionaries
Starbursts plot in secrecy
And quasars turn on frequently.
What a gas! You gotta come and see
At the Zoo.

There. And if you still don’t get it, go take a look at Galaxy Zoo!

Lyrics Paul Simon, 1967 (sort of)

A little over a year ago we mentioned Galaxy Zoo where you could help astronomers and cosmologists identify galaxies.  Much success all round.  And well done to the University’s very own Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation which is involved in this.

Today Zoo 2 is launched and focuses on the “nearest, brightest and most beautiful” galaxies but lets you spend more time with them and really develop a relationship.

Join the ranks of those who zoo. https://www.galaxyzoo.org/

They also Twitter: http://twitter.com/galaxyzoo

You can read more about the project here:

http://www.universetoday.com/2009/02/16/galaxy-zoo-2-launches/