Hubble’s 20th birthday treat
24 April 2010
The Hubble Space Telescope is 20 years old this week and, to mark this anniversary, astronomers are asking volunteers to help classify thousands of new images of galaxies.
As part of the birthday celebrations NASA's Space Telescope Science Institute and the online astronomy project Galaxy Zoo are making almost 200,000 Hubble images of galaxies available to the public at www.galaxyzoo.org. They hope that volunteers from around the world looking for their own favourite galaxies will join forces to give the venerable telescope a present - classifications of each galaxy which will help astronomers understand how the Universe we see around us formed.
'The large surveys that Hubble has completed allow us to trace the Universe's evolution better than ever before,' said University of Nottingham astronomer and Galaxy Zoo team member Dr Steven Bamford. 'The vast majority of these galaxies will never have been viewed by anyone, and yet we need human intuition to make the most of what they are telling us'.
Visitors to the site will be asked to answer simple questions about what they are seeing - for example, identifying the number of spiral arms visible, or spotting galaxies in the process of merging.
More than 250,000 people have already contributed to Galaxy Zoo since its launch in 2007, but so far they have been looking only at the local Universe.
'Hubble will enable us to look back in time, to the era when many of the galaxies we see today were forming,' said Dr Chris Lintott of Oxford University, Galaxy Zoo principal investigator. 'As a kid I always wanted a time machine for my birthday, but this is the next best thing!'
The team are also hoping that the search will uncover the weird and the wonderful just as the original Galaxy Zoo produced a slew of exciting discoveries, including a set of small, round, green galaxies known as the Galaxy Zoo 'Peas'.
'We never dreamt that people would find so many fascinating objects in the original Galaxy Zoo,' said Yale University astronomer Dr Kevin Schawinski. 'Who knows what's hiding in the Hubble images?'
'Every galaxy is special in its own way,' said Stuart Lynn of Oxford University, Galaxy Zoo team member, 'but some are worthy of individual attention. Anyone combing through the data using our site could make a spectacular discovery, and that would be the best birthday present of all.’
For more information visit www.galaxyzoo.org or contact Dr Chris Lintott of Oxford University on +44 (0)1865 273638 or email cjl@astro.ox.ac.uk
Or Dr Steven Bamford of the University of Nottingham on +44 (0)115 846 8815; mobile +44 (0)7812 028021 or email steven.bamford@nottingham.ac.uk
Alternatively, contact the University of Oxford Press Office on +44 (0)1865 283877 or email press.office@admin.ox.ac.uk
USA CONTACT: Dr Kevin Schawinski of Yale University on +1 203 432-9759 or email kevin.schawinski@yale.edu