Galaxy Zoo Talk

Physics Forums

  • liometopum by liometopum

    I just posted a link to galaxy zoo at Physics Forums, in the astronomy section.
    https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/zooniverse-or-galaxy-zoo.794757/

    I hope that was ok.

    Posted

  • ElisabethB by ElisabethB moderator

    Thanks for the mention ! Hope we get lots of new zooites ! 😄

    Posted

  • JeanTate by JeanTate in response to liometopum's comment.

    Cool!

    Buta et al. has a new preprint up on arXiv, one that you may find interesting: "A Classical Morphological Analysis of Galaxies in the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S4G)". Morphological classification biases due to the wavelength range in which they are made is - obviously - important for robustly going from observed morphology to physical reality. I started a thread to discuss it over in Radio Galaxy Zoo Talk, here. There's some interesting relevance to Galaxy Zoo's published results.

    From your PF post:

    I think one of the more enjoyable aspects is possibly being the first person to examine, and comment on, many of these galaxies.

    Here's a shameless plug: Radio Galaxy Zoo (RGZ) is really wide open for publishable discoveries made by zooites! 😄

    Despite the fact that the radio region of the electromagnetic spectrum was the second to be explored by astronomers (the optical the first; radio astronomy began well before the gamma, x-ray, UV, IR*, and microwave sky had even been observed), and despite the publication of catalogs with millions of optical-radio source matches (e.g. the Kimball&Ivezić Unified Catalog), within mere months of RGZ' launch, at least three kinds of publishable discoveries were made by zooites: HyMORS (a.k.a. hybrids), giants, and SDRAGNs (general description: bright, extensive radio emission associated with disk galaxies' AGNs) (this recent GZ blog post mentions them; older ones cover them too).

    If you're into Open Science, why not come and join the Improving the efficiency of SDRAGN discovery, an open discussion? 😃

    *with some fudging re definition; parts of the near-IR were sorta explored, somewhat, by astronomers, even in the 19th century

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    Wow, this guide that someone shared there at that forum... I'd never seen it before.

    http://zoo2.galaxyzoo.org/how_to_take_part

    I wasn't around for past Galaxy Zoo decisions/changes, but does anyone know why was it ever retired? It looks like it might be incredibly useful for new classifiers, and I would think it could be a good example for things to build for other projects, too. Was there a reason we don't have it any more?

    Posted

  • Capella05 by Capella05 moderator

    Yes, it was the tutorial for GZ2 - I might be wrong, but I think that started in 2008? That project was completed a loooong time ago 😃

    The images, the classification tree and the objectives have all changed since then, so a tutorial from that long ago will not be applicable today. It would be like trouble shooting a windows 8 PC with a windows 98 manual. 😃

    As for why we don't have a similar one, you will have to contact the project PI!

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    I just really like the style of the tutorial, giving you so many examples and letting you test yourself against the "pro" classification.

    I think it's a great way to learn the ins and outs of classifying, and I may push for doing something similar on future projects! 😃

    Posted

  • Capella05 by Capella05 moderator in response to DZM's comment.

    I won't disagree - that is where I 'cut my teeth' - but that is something for you to take up with the PI's.

    You also need to consider that there might be a very valid reason for the vague tutorials - they may want unbiased classifications - totally uninfluenced by the opinion of someone who wrote the tutorial.

    This is just my personal opinion 😃

    Posted

  • jules by jules

    Weren't the early-style long tutorials found to be putting people off? I'm sure I remember reading or chatting about that. Hence the very short tutorials of recent projects and the learn-as-you-do approach. In the end, whatever keeps people coming back for more has to win. 😃

    Posted

  • liometopum by liometopum

    I used that tutorial extensively at first. For example, currently the site shows edge-on profiles as white, drawn images. That tutorial link gives very clear images of edge-ons, and makes classification more enjoyable. I want to learn as I go. It is the fact that my skill level keeps increasing that keeps me here.

    Posted