GalaxyZoo First Anniversary

July 11, 2008 12:37 PM

Today is the first birthday of Galaxy Zoo. The largest astronomical collaboration in history, Galaxy Zoo has enlisted nearly a 150,000 volunteers to help classify over a million galaxies and released four science papers. It's made a number of interesting discoveries such as a large number of ring galaxies, Hanny’s Voorwerp, and a large number of visually (but not physically) overlapping galaxies. You can help classify galaxies or classify galaxy mergers. Don't miss the visual catalog of over 250 Objects of the Day--pretty much every one of them stunning.
posted by flug (5 comments total)

(previously)
posted by flug at 12:41 PM on July 11, 2008

Honk if you ♥ Hanny's Voorwerp.
posted by steef at 1:17 PM on July 11, 2008

Must say at this point, a year on, when I heard about it and posted it I wasn't involved - I'd not heard of it until it was released to the public. But now I am fairly heavily, so I obviously couldn't post it again. The response did absolutely floor everyone, and continues to do so.

Zoo 2 is being worked on, with ideas for Zoo 3 and further spin-offs in the works, so there'll be more birthdays to come.
posted by edd at 1:50 PM on July 11, 2008

The Economist has a good article about the project and the voorwerp.
posted by sindark at 1:51 PM on July 11, 2008

I like classifying galaxies as a way to kill time while I mine asteroids in EVE Online.

Space, man.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 1:52 PM on July 11, 2008