News from the front line

[zookeeperChris]

 

Dear Galaxy Zoo member,

We know that you'd like to hear more about how things are going.
We've been held up by a few behind the scenes glitches, but here's where we are now.

1. PROGRESS REPORT

THANK YOU everyone for taking part in this exciting astronomy project. In the
last newsletter we said we were aiming for 20 classifications per galaxy, and
with the help of 100,000 of you, we've smashed that target. Every galaxy has
now been classifed by lots of you, and you all turn out to be fabulous
astronomers!

We have been starting to process the data and getting out some important
science results, which we will be sure to tell you about (we will be posting
updates on the forum www.galaxyzooforum.org). The first papers aren't too far from being done.

While we're still working on the details of our analysis, we've tested your
classifications against previous studies where astronomers have looked at a few
thousand galaxies,  (the largest sample was by our very own Kevin, the first results
from which are in this technical paper - http://xxx.arxiv.org/abs/0709.3015) and
we are pleased to see that your results seem to agree with theirs. This is a good sign -
it means that your classifications are about as good as those done by professional
astronomers, and we have many more galaxies which is all important.


2. WHAT NEXT?

The final task for us is to check that we understand exactly why you classified
the galaxies the way you did, and how that might affect our final results. This has
been held up slightly by computer problems, but we wanted to warn you that you're
likely to find a few odd objects turning up on GZ in the next week or so - such as
images in black and white for example. Please just carry on classifying as normal.
In fact, even if you haven't logged on for a while, it would be of immense help if
you could all come back once this feature  goes live and do just another 50 galaxies.
If you have any insights into what goes through your mind as you classify galaxies,
please share them on the forum.

Once we've finished our checks, the first phase
of Galaxy Zoo will be over. However, we are proud to announce that we're
working hard on Galaxy Zoo 2.0, which will ask for more detailed
classifications and (hopefully) will look beyond the galaxies in the Sloan survey.
Given the quality of the work you've done so far, we reckon
that you can do much more than just divide spirals from ellipticals. The new
site should go live in a few months.

3. FOLLOW UP

In the last week we passed a major milestone in Galaxy Zoo, when we submitted the first observing
proposals based on your discoveries. We're hoping to be able to use telescopes at Kitt Peak
(http://www.noao.edu/kpno/) to chase some of the gravitational lenses that have been found in the data.
We're also following up the work of those of you who responded to a request for close pairs of galaxies
(http://www.galaxyzooforum.org/index.php?topic=6732.0). Our proposals are now assessed by a committee
of astronomers who decide who gets to use the telescope, and we should hear back in early December.


Finally, thanks for all the hard work. The excitement is just beginning!

Chris & The Galaxy Zoo team.

[zookeeper_Kate]

It is early days still, but our preliminary results are indicating that there are more anti-clockwise galaxies than clockwise! I am sure some of you will not be suprised by this, considering posts like this one. Anyway, we are now scratching our heads trying to figure out if this is due to some kind of bias from the eye, as according to visionary scientists we can recognise some patterns better than others. That is why we are going to also be adding some mirrored images into the Zoo over the next few weeks. Like Chris said - please just keep classifying as normal.

If the excess of anti-clockwise galaxies really is there in the sky, then we need to figure out how significant it is - because obviously we do not expect *exactly* the same number of anti-clock and clockwise galaxies. Some deviation from the expected number is allowed... and we need to work out how big the excess needs to be for the result to be unusual and interesting.

Anyway - like I said - early days, and results can change as we get more results in. But we will keep you posted! And thanks again. The GZ team

[dlocksmith]

One of the nicest things about this zoo is that its real easy to get going and real hard to stop!
I believe that a large part of this is the simplicity of the classification system and the way you can switch to autopilot and still classifiy accurately.

Please dont make Zoo2 to complicated!

[Hanny]

Thanks for the info zookeepers

[Alice]

Fantastic. Thank you Chris and Kate. And I like Kevin's article!

I'll be interested to see what will happen about black and white galaxies. A lot of people have wanted to classify by colour, and I have been guilty of this too on occasion!

GOOD LUCK for the proposals. And the results!

[Rick_R]

I suggest that you folks also consider collaborating with sociologists and social psychologists. Aside from an astronomy perspective, I think social scientists and business management types would be interested in analyzing the type of people who participate in this type of activity (educational background, educational level, occupation, age, location, introvert, extrovert), characteristics of the social interaction, etc., quality of work, etc.

Is GalaxyZoo the very first attempt at something like this on a large scale over a long term?

CERN's Large Hadron Collider project and the South American telescope scheduled to go on-line in the next few years will both need processing for massive amounts of data much larger than SDSS. Many museums have huge numbers of artifact fragments such as broken clay tablets that need to be reassembled. If pieces were numbered and photographed, perhaps volunteers would try piecing them together on the Web from the photos.

You should be able to get a few grants to have the forums, etc., analyzed from a sociological perspective. Talk to Harvard's MBA program about having the on-line program analyzed as a "management case study".

[zookeeperChris]

Thanks for the responses. In no particular order

Zoo2 : We'll try not to make it too complicated, but part of the point will be to get more detailed classifications. To make up for that, I suspect we'll use only the galaxies which have been well classified by Zoo1, so you shouldn't have so many FFTs (faint fuzzy things). We're also working to find some new data to process in the original way, and that will hopefully appear around the same time.

Recruiting sociologists etc : We'd love to. We've been working to try and find people who might be interested in collaborating, but would love to hear from anyone else. We don't have a huge amount of time (as I'm sure you've noticed!) so the more the merrier...

Chrisß

[Hanny]

I like the jargon Chris FFTs and I'll look forward to it

[Alice]

Yeah, cool jargon indeed, and I'm intrigued by your new name, beta-Chris. Who's the alpha zookeeper then? 

When you say this:

If you have any insights into what goes through your mind as you classify galaxies,
please share them on the forum.

What kind of things do you have in mind, specifically? Often what goes through my mind is: "Now, when is that forum page going to reload?" and "I'm hungry, but I have to go on classifying. Just one more . . . one more . . . one more . . ." and "Oh, you MORON, you just clicked the wrong button again!". Presumably that is not quite the data you have in mind. Would it help to ask us questions to think about while we classify, or would that narrow things too much?

[driller]

Great news from Zookeepers Chris and Kate about our results! It has helped to dispel any 'analysis slump' I may have been feeling. It is so nice to know our mainly amateur efforts have been worthwhile.

For my part I had a subjective feeling I had cassified more ACW than CW, and had even been willing , almost subconsciously, for more CW spirals to appear. I hope it didn't skew my results; others may have been feeling the same. 

I have learned a lot about galaxies here which has piqued my interest, and picked up a lot of tricks and tips from the many keen and talented members, though I don't want to get too deep into astrophysics. I echo dlocksmith's comment that GZ2 shouldn't be too complicated, but a challenge is more than welcome.   

[Hanny]

Yeah, cool jargon indeed, and I'm intrigued by your new name, beta-Chris. Who's the alpha zookeeper then? 
When you say this:

If you have any insights into what goes through your mind as you classify galaxies,
please share them on the forum.

What kind of things do you have in mind, specifically? Often what goes through my mind is: "Now, when is that forum page going to reload?" and "I'm hungry, but I have to go on classifying. Just one more . . . one more . . . one more . . ." and "Oh, you MORON, you just clicked the wrong button again!". Presumably that is not quite the data you have in mind. Would it help to ask us questions to think about while we classify, or would that narrow things too much?

Hehe, yeah, we think the same

[ilrobi]

Thank-you for the news.   

Good news the possibility of black/white galaxies and for more dettailled posssibility of to classify the galaxies.   

[Beezlebub]

Thank you.

[Oz]

Well I'm just delighted with the whole thing - love getting feedback too which helps with knowing if us complete amateurs are doing OK
Such a world away when I walk into the zoo at night but absolutely real, not pretentious and has nothing to do with reality TV or the shallowness of society. Dunno about black and white though - for me the whole thing is about the colour!

[EigenState]

Greetings,

If you have any insights into what goes through your mind as you classify galaxies,
please share them on the forum.

Personally I look for symmetry elements.  I suspect that color provides a rather significant bias as to what symmetry element I will first look for within any given image, although color can certainly reveal structure that would be difficult to discern given black and white images.

Congratulations on the manuscript appearing at arXiv--I enjoyed reading all 18 pages of it--and look forward to more to come.

Best regards,
EigenState