Galaxy Zoo classifications
Hi
I’ll post a proper update about Galaxy Zooand more amazing images later, but I wanted to respond to those of you clamouring for extra buttons. For now, the task is to get a sense of how the galaxies fit into these two major classifications. They’re used almost routinely in the literature as shorthand for two groups of galaxies whose properties are different; ‘old, large’ ellipticals and ‘young dynamic’ spirals. What we don’t know is what the properties of these two large groups of galaxies are IF you do that selection properly, by eye - and we’re now very close to finding out thanks to your hard, hard work. Now, you don’t have to spend more than two minutes in the Zoo to realise that these are very diffuse groups. At times, it’s like splitting animals into vertebrate or invertibrate and trying to draw conclusions from that. Actually, that’s a pretty good analogy because that’s the stage we’ve got to - we don’t yet have enough detail to make finer divisions which are meaningful.
However, thanks to those of you who’ve come to help we might now be able to do that, and we’re looking at ways to let you make a completely free classification, perhaps by picking galaxies which are similar to each other from a selection. Once this first cut is done, we’ll get working on it.
Chris
P.S. I have to say thanks to Stuart, who has been keeping the team inspired with his writings about our zoo.
on July 16th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
People, do go along to Troy’s website, http://galaxyzoo.wordpress.com (no http://www.) - there are some seriously cool images here and a few nice little questions and answers, but very few people seem to have discovered it so far.
For example, surely you must have wondered what all those very straight green, blue or black lines are, and why a massive star seems to create a very straight-edged area of complete blackness around it? Check out the “Tips for Submitting” on the bottom right-hand corner so you don’t start by cluttering up the Comments column and making a complete ass of yourself like I did.
on July 18th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Chris,
http://cas.sdss.org/astro/en/tools/chart/chart.asp?ra=178.31783839&dec=60.66546695
A ring galaxy for you (zoom out a little).
Congratulations on a fabulous project to all involved…
on July 24th, 2007 at 12:44 am
I’ve been noticing those ring galaxies are they spirals whose arms end up touching, or ellipticals with outer dense areas?
on July 25th, 2007 at 1:55 am
A page on GalaxyZoo that had a more extensive gallery of images than the tutuorial, including images that are difficult to intepret, and expert judgements on what those images were, would be very helpful.