Galaxy Zoo Talk

What's this?

  • Sunflowers by Sunflowers

    I've just signed up today (about 5 minutes ago) and I'm not sure what this is. I now see that lostlens has said that it's an artifact/star, but what are the characteristics of an artifact/star, rather than a galaxy?

    Posted

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

    Hi and welcome Sunflower 😃

    In this case we can tell it is a foreground star (with artifacts), from all the spikes (diffraction spikes) radiating from the center of the star. The odd pink colouring is caused by oversaturation - foreground stars tend to overwhelm the telecsope.

    This thread has lots of information on other artifacts you may come across.

    Hope this helps, and happy hunting 😃
    Capella.

    Posted

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

    Welcome to Galaxy Zoo, Sunflowers!

    Strange as it may seem, the object this image is asking you to classify is the small, faint fuzzy thing below the star. 😮

    In this particular case, the software which selected the image to ask for us to classify has a problem ... and it's by classifying this as #star/artifact that we let the developers know (so they can tune the software to avoid images like this in future).

    Stars are easy to spot, if they're bright ... they have four 'compass points' coming from them (sometimes more, and not always pointing 'NSEW'!), and usually have centers with odd colors and perhaps strange shapes too.

    As to what galaxies look like, well, take a look at a handful of others' comments ... 😄

    Happy hunting! 😃

    Posted