Sfair’s blog

Are you an astronomy enthusiast? Do you want to contribute to scientific research? It’s easier than you think and you don’t need to be an expert on astronomy to help.

GalaxyZoo is an online project which intends to classify galaxies according their shape, that could be elliptic, spiral (subdivided into clockwise or anticlockwise rotation), irregular or merged galaxies. It seems to be an easy task, but as the project developers say:

“… the human brain is much better at recognizing patterns than a computer can ever be. Any computer program we write to sort our galaxies into categories would do a reasonable job, but it would also inevitably throw out the unusual, the weird and the wonderful. To rescue these interesting systems which have a story to tell, we need you.”

So, how to proceed:

1. Before start working, I strongly recommend you to read carefully the tutorial available here
2. Once you understand the procedure and feel confident to classify go to the project website and create an account
3. After register, you need to do a small trial where you must correctly classify 8 or more galaxies (of 15)
4. After finish the trial, you’re read to have fun

Thanks to Luiz Armesto that remember me about this project.

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