The Irregular galaxy project is a zooite run project, blessed by Chris. What is it about, how can you help?
Current clicks :
There are thousands of irregular galaxies out there, some small and insignificant, others brights and dazzling. We have gathered them here in the forum, but none of the professional astronomers behind the Zoo is currently looking at them. This is a large group of galaxies, can we find anything about them? The largest study of irregulars to date looked at 161 of them, we have thousands...
The first way to help is to join the
classification. We are asking 9 questions about each image from is it irregular? To can you see any spiral structure? This like most Zoo projects is purely visual classification.
The images include many possibles, duplicates and some not irregular at all. So the first part is to help eliminate the non-irregulars and duplicates. Then we are building up data on the irregulars.
Data will be released so anybody and everybody can look at it and try their own analysis. Some draft data (
web page or as a
CSV table) is available now, but it does not currently have enough clicks to generate good research on yet, but it does allow people to build up models. Joining in the analysis or data presentation is another way you can help. I have integrated the draft data with SDSS (under CasJObs) so advanced searches can look at both what we have found and the original SDSS data on the objects (e.g. colour and size info).
A special mention must be given to Lovethetropics, who is adding thousands of images to our data set. (Others are also welcome to help find more).
Do this well, and we will have a proper scientific proper paper with Zooite names as authors 1,2,3... Chris says he is happy to act as supervisor.
This topic is for news about the project, to report irregulars please use the existing topic in
Stunning Sights. To ask questions about classification about a specific object use the existing topic in
Analysis Tips.
Join in, classify and enjoy.
