Passage I

Citizen Scientists Advance Astronomy at Home

Starting in 2007, volunteers around the world began contributing via the Internet to cutting-edge astronomical research. Galaxy Zoo, a website developed at Oxford University, achieved an immediate and extraordinary success, surprising even the astronomers who created it.

Initially, project leaders invited the public to study images gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) in order to classify galaxies as elliptical or spiral. (2) In the case of spiral galaxies, by which participants were also to note the direction of the galaxy's rotation, clockwise, or counterclockwise. During Galaxy Zoo's first year, 150,000 volunteers took a short online tutorial and began eyeballing the SDSS images on their own computers and submitting their classifications. Soon after the start of the project, its managers had to upgrade hardware to handle the contributions, which proved to be a real challenge.

Project creators are quick to point out that humans perform some scientific tasks far better than computers do, even in disciplines such as astronomy, however, that rely heavily on technology. (9) The huge database amassed as part of Galaxy Zoo allowed researchers to advance their understanding of galaxy formation, evolution, and types. [A] Resulting articles appeared in such elaborate locations as the journals of the Royal Astronomical Society. [B] Following Galaxy Zoo's success are other similar projects, such as Galaxy Zoo: Hubble. [C] These online endeavors, which ask for increasing sophistication of judgment from citizen scientists, engaging them in an array of astronomical challenges. [D] "If you're quick," reads the home page of one such website "you may even be the first person in history to see each of the galaxies you're asked to classify." With that kind of encouragement, hundreds of thousands of viewers look for new planets, describe "bubbles" in the Milky Way, and examine the surface of the Moon-tasks each volunteer can perform conveniently on his or her own computer. (15)