A week inside the Galaxy Zoo
Can it really be a week? The launch of Galaxy Zoo will live long in the memory for sheer strangeness as the sudden realisation that what for a while has seemed like a crazy idea was actually going to work.
Let me back up a bit. Some of the work I’ve been doing here in Oxford is based on a sample of 50,000 galaxies which were classified by eye by, among others, Kevin Schawinski. Actually, he’d badgered me (rather rudely, I thought at the time!) in the talk I gave during my interview about the pointlessness of making the selection any other way. Once I got here, we were talking one day and one of us said wistfully that it would be nice to do the other 950,000 and complete the job properly, and then it hit us that this might actually be possible.
That was, I think, late February, and since then we’d been working pretty steadily toward a launch that was always a few weeks away. 10 days or so ago we heard that the BBC might be interested, and so it was that last Tuesday morning I found myself with Kevin and Kate Land at Science Oxford along with a TV crew and some surprisingly enthusiastic sixth formers from a local school who we’d roped in. The filming went well, but there were other science stories around, most notably a story about how scientists were right about global warming (well, duh!), and I was quietly pessemistic. The press release went out, and we waited.
At 6.45am last Wednesday, I was ushered into a small room in a building on Millbank, just down from the Houses of Parliament. Sitting there – desperately preparing for an interview with the Prime Minister – was John Humphrys. Being able to see the person interviewing me was hugely helpful, and almost overcame the nerves of being in front of one of the most famously intimidating interviewers in the country. At the end, clutching a styrofoam cup of BBC coffee on the quiet street outside, I thought I’d done a reasonable job. Around this time news of Galaxy Zoo appeared on the BBC news website and then all hell broke loose.
Despite the presence of stories like the fourth on the list above, we remained in the ‘most emailed’ list for most of the day, and the computer generating images just couldn’t cope with the traffic. We spent the rest of the day personally answering complaints that the site wasn’t working, explaining that we were working on it and that all would be well soon. In a classic demonstration of the law of unintended consequences, changing the site so that images were available faster led to a dramatic increase in web traffic. Our server had survived multiple sloan press frenzies, and all the data releases from that project but Galaxy Zoo well and truly broke it. Jan, ourtself-proclaimed ringmaster (Do zoos have rings? Hmm…) has worked very, very hard and it wasn’t his fault, but even he signed his email ‘Whew!’. At this point I started giggling to myself.
More emails to answer, half of them while sitting through the announcement of the most distant galaxies yet seen (wifi in lecture theatres is A Good Thing).
By the time I went to bed that night, everything was fixed and the classifications were flooding in, along with email after email with beautiful and amazing sights. This is one of my recent favourites, from claire:
Ever since, the emails (sorry if we haven’t responded to yours yet – we will) and the classifications have just kept flooding in. All our casual plans to sit down after a couple of days to see how things are going were thrown out the window, and we’ve been left desperately running to keep up. It seemed that everyone out there wanted to be part of this – to explore the Universe and to help science – or just wanted to see pretty pictures. There was also a fairly constant stream of questions about particular objects which we will get too. I’m only half joking when I’ve been telling the team we’re going to set up a website to invite the public to answer the queries sent in. We’ll call it Email Zoo.
Seriously, I’ve been inspired by just what it’s possible to do with this internet thing, and we have lots of ideas for new exhibits and attractions for the Zoo, in order to make use of our more than 50,000 research assistants. One idea might be to do freeform classification – which galaxy does this one most look like? – and see if the old catagories of spirals and ellipticals are actually any good. We’re also looking for different data sets to let you loose on, and so we’re a long way from done right now. I can’t wait for next week at the Zoo. Thanks for all your help, and thanks to the Team
on July 18th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
I’d like to say a galactic thank you to all of you who have bought these amazing sights to us. It’s a real joy and slightly humbling to be bought this much closer to our neighbours.
Once again thank you.
on July 18th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Well, on behalf of all the Zoo members (we really need a proper name, dontcha think? What do we call ourselves… ‘Wardens’? ‘Stewards’? suggestions welcome!) I’d like to thank you, and all the Zoo team, for giving us the opportunity to participate in this grand and exciting adventure. I’ve been ‘into’ astronomy for, what, 35 years now, and over those years have spent countless hours standing shivering in fields watching shooting stars, peering into an eyepiece at a shaking image of Saturn’s rings or Mars’ ice caps or staring open-mouthed at the Orion nebula through binocs and I’ve wished time and time again that one day I’d be able to actually contribute something to astronomy. I’ve come to realise I’m not going to discover a comet or an asteroid – not from the light-polluted heart of Kendal – and I guess I have to accept that I’m not going to be the first person to walk on Mars now… sigh… but you’ve given me the chance to contribute to astronomy via Galaxy Zoo, so thank you.
I dread to think of the number of hours since the Zoo’s launch that I’ve sat here, clicking away, touring the universe through a window on my screen, seeing galaxies no human eyes have ever seen before, but every one of them has been well spent I reckon. It’s shown me wonders no words can describe.
So, congratulations to you and all of the team – and to everyone who’s signed up for the Zoo too. We’re just a few steps into an incredible journey, I think, and none of us can begin to guess where this road will take us. But it will be somewhere amazing!
on July 18th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
This has been a dream come true for me, I’m very proud to be part of this awesome project, thank you Chris and the team.
on July 18th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Email Zoo= the forum, IMHO. We are desperate to share our interesting or confusing results, without having to bother The Team for every question.
When you-all are looking toward the future, remember that 50,000 assistants are the *starter set*. When schools start up again in the fall, you could easily see an increase of an order of magnitude.
Indeed, as the parent of teenagers, I can report that proto-scientists are at least as interested as adults in GalaxyZoo. You may want to think about an Educational Division, in which secondary-school science teachers work with astronomers to let students help with real science. I’m certain there are any number of foundations that would love to pay for the servers — GalaxyZoo could be an unequalled opportunity to teach students about scientific classification, astronomy, and the size of the universe.
You’re cosmologists: Think Big. A million helpers big.
on July 19th, 2007 at 7:43 am
Mark, I’d like to second your sentiments
Chris, Kevin and zoo team – a truly inspiring ‘trail blazing’ project.
A fantastic way in demonstrating what can be achieved when engaging the public like this.
on July 19th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Today the Universe, Tomorrow the …
on July 21st, 2007 at 2:39 pm
[...] I get less opportunity to read weblogs than I would like, but the various ‘carnivals’ keep me alerted to good postings. The 12th Carnival of Space is now available, this one hosted by Music of the Spheres. Stories range from the remarkable Galaxy Zoo project to a pilgrimage to the 100-inch telescope at Mount Wilson (this is where Edwin Hubble did so much to explain the nature of galaxies and the expansion of the universe). Similarly, Philosophia Naturalis is now up with its 12th iteration, looking at dark matter candidates, the history of the moon’s orbit and the implications of high-redshift galaxies for the epoch of reionization. [...]
on July 21st, 2007 at 5:59 pm
I have started a blog located at galaxyimages.blogspot.com to showcase some of the best images of galaxies on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, along with descriptions of what they are. If you have any other images to share, please e-mail them to me at f1zzle@hotmail.co.uk, along with the SDSS ref. no. Hopefully this blog will not be needed for very long as the amazing team behind Galaxy Zoo work on getting the forum. Thanks for this amazing project!
on July 23rd, 2007 at 1:31 pm
I know it has been hectic in getting this up and running however eventually it would be great to see to the top 20 weekly finds and a little explaination, if I see something unusual I send it to the “team”. Would it be better to put a “basket” on the site where unusual images could go, I would love learn what some of these mysterious objects are and a forum would be great. Still mad about this site really good stuff!
on July 24th, 2007 at 12:42 am
It has been dizzying staring into all those magnificent galaxies, even the fuzzy ones. Glue the zoo community together and launch a public forum, there are a number of free systems you can use like e z board. A place to compare, and share images.
on July 24th, 2007 at 1:20 am
Really love the site!
IMHO, I think of myself as a “Galaxy Pundit” espesially on the small fuzzy red ones. Like the site says, I dont stress on borderline ones, just give a best guess.
But I really wish the “”my Galaxy” feature worked. Some I hate to classify, because then they’re gone!
on July 24th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
When I was a kid I wanted to be an astronomer, then discovered all the math and endless hours involved. I think what interested me most (and probably other “zoo keepers” out there) was to see what is out there in the universe. GalaxyZoo has made it possible for a boyhood dream to come true.
I can’t wait for the forum to get set up to share pictures I’ve saved and see what others have found.
Thanks!
on July 24th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
Absolutely loving Galaxy Zoo
May even introduce some of ‘my’ kids to it (I’m a Youth Worker and we run a computer club among other things).
Chris I hope you enjoy the ring I found and to anyone who hasn’t joined up yet, Galaxy Zoo is great (but very, very addictive, Alice and I often send our favourite discoveries to each other at silly hours).
on July 25th, 2007 at 12:44 am
My wife brought up a question that I had not thought of, namely how do you adjust for possible mis-classifications either because people mis-classify something by accident up to the ill-willed person who on purpose just likes to classify things incorrectly to throw off the results?
My wife said she would not be too confident with the results especially as a basis for formulation of scientific theories or even publishing the results with confidence.
I imagine you have some statistical way of dealing with this situation so that you do have a statistical confidence about the results! It would be interesting to hear about how that works!
on July 26th, 2007 at 2:04 am
Truly amazing. So glad to be a part of this project, even if it’s only a small contribution. It’s a great example of the extraordinary power the internet can bring to bear on a problem.
on July 26th, 2007 at 3:42 am
Whew.
It seems like every other week i tell myself “THIS is the real reason why God created the internet.” Well, here I am again. What a great idea; what an excellent way to ‘waste’ time; and, yes, I can see this project growing into something even more interesting in the years to come..
Kudos. (That’s Props to the young folk.)
on July 26th, 2007 at 11:50 am
So have we done the million yet? You mention 50 000 working on it, well I’ve certainly done more than 20!!!!!!!
on July 26th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Well after reading this and everything else you link to your site on Galaxyzoo.org today I have to say WOW. I was feeling bad about e-mailing you the 7 or 8 times so far. But seeing some that I e-mailed you show up on Flikr already I’d have to say I did good e-mailing them to you.
So here is hoping you get a new galaxy catagory named after you. Cheers! I feel bad only doing 255 so far.
on July 27th, 2007 at 6:43 am
Stuart – it’s gotta be “Zooites”
galaxybabe
on July 29th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Hello,
Isn’t it the first time the general public have the opportunity to work by them selves on a space science project on the web?
Really, a great idea
Pascal
on August 6th, 2007 at 1:16 am
I saw a plug of this on “The sky at night” and joined soonafter and I think its great that I, from the comfort of my bedroom can contribute in some small way to science
on August 6th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
Wow! I am a pharmacist but always wanted to be an astronomer and look at the stars and such. However, I have lived in Louisiana (USA) all my life and there are not many clear nights for viewing. This program is wonderful and I am having a blast! Thank you for sharing this adventure with all of us.
on August 14th, 2007 at 10:50 am
Over the years, many people have declared that Astronomy and Space activity in general are of little or no relevance to the lives of “ordinary” people. The uptake of Distributed Computing- begun back in 1999 by the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence SETI@Home project ( 5million members+), is now clearly a major phenomenon in science and society,and a sign that matters beyond the Earth remain of consuming interest to many of all ages. We now know, after all, that we live in a cosmic ecosystem.
Perhaps people are not “ordinary” after all.
Given much of the contemporary scene , this would appear to be just as well!
” Man belongs wehrerever a keen eye, quick wits, and a strong right arm can take him!”
on August 15th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
i first heard about this galaxy zoo project on the sky at night. i took the trial, identified my first galaxy, and i was hooked. brilliant idea, great site. i’ve discovered, what others more experienced than myself have described as a possible blackhole, among other beautifully breathtaking wonders. keep up the good work and may this be the first of many such experiments involving the general public and amateur enthusiasts.
on October 19th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
I am very happy for entering the zoo!
I am glad to do some help for this project!
on October 20th, 2007 at 8:52 am
我也是！Me too.
on October 24th, 2007 at 6:03 am
哈哈 很有趣
我也很喜欢
i love it too
on December 27th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
I had heard of this project before, but came to it through Brian May’s site. It is an amazingly absorbing occupation and I’m delighted to be here and to take part.
Jane
on January 18th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
[...] So I log in to discover that Phil has linked to me, with the top post being something only of interest to us British folk. Obviously, if you are from the UK you should Save Astronomy, but perhaps the rest of you might want to check out what it feels like to observe on top of Mauna Kea, or to have your research visited by tens of thousands of people, or even a lesser known story from the recent AAS conference. No? Then at least find out how astronomers die. [...]
on August 6th, 2008 at 7:15 am
Is cosmos ( star, galaxy ) will destroy ? and what abaout cosmos before the big bang, you can analogical that the exist of sothing ( like chair stc .) that must be made by some one. What abaout cosmos who made this, or who made the bigbang? The made cosmis must be one , becouse if that one more so they are fghiting so only one not tree who made cosmos say Allah S.W.T ind this according with islam religion.
on October 4th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Many thanx to Chris and the Team for allowing me to be a part of this brilliant public project which I learned about through “The Sky at Night”. I have enjoyed it immensely,but it seems that right now I cannot logon to the site and I wonder if this part of the project has come to an end. I have identified over 3000 galaxies to date and look forward to the next stage if there is to be one.