Listening to a recent Scientific American podcast on my way into work this morning I stumbled upon an item about a project called Galaxy Zoo. This is an internet-based science project that anyone can sign up to help with in which “citizen scientists” (ordinary people) look at pictures of galaxies and classify them by following a sequence of simple questions. This is a highly efficient way of sifting through the mass of galaxy images captured by space telescpes so that scientists can then focus in on particular types of galaxies that they are interested in. It is a good approach because the human brain is really good at visual processing and can perform the classification task more reliably that a computer algorithm. So, if you fancy a bit of star-gazing you can sign up at the Galaxy Zoo website and join in.
Tim O'Hare 