11 Jul 07

Astronomers from Oxford University are inviting members of the public to take part in a census of one million galaxies.

Visitors to www.galaxyzoo.org will get to see stunning images of galaxies, most of which have never been viewed by human eyes before. By sorting some of these images into 'spiral galaxies' (like our own Milky Way) or 'elliptical galaxies', visitors will help astronomers to understand the structure of the universe. The new digital images were taken using the robotic Sloan Digital Sky Survey telescope in New Mexico.

'It's not just for fun', said Kevin Schawinski of Oxford Astrophysics. 'The human brain is actually better than a computer at pattern recognition tasks like this. Whether you spend five minutes, 15 minutes or five hours using the site, your contribution will be invaluable.' Visitors will be able to print out posters of the galaxies they have explored and even compete to see who is the best virtual astronomer.

The galaxyzoo.org team were inspired by projects such as Stardust@home, in which NASA invited the public to sort through dust grains obtained by a mission to Comet Wild-2. Oxford's Dr Chris Lintott, co-presenter of the BBC's Sky at Night programme and galaxyzoo.org team member, commented: 'What the Stardust team achieved was incredible, but our galaxies are much more interesting to look at than their dust grains. We hope that participants in Galaxy Zoo will not only contribute to science, but have a lot of fun along the way.'

The astronomers hope that the survey will shed light on how different kinds of galaxies are distributed across the sky. The results might even reveal that there is something fundamentally wrong with existing models of the universe.

Sir Patrick Moore, an enthusiastic supporter of the project, said: 'Non-professionals have always been deeply involved in studying the sky and they now have yet another opportunity to make themselves really useful. Moreover, their help is now of immense value so do join up - as I am doing myself!'