Diversions for Insomniacs #9

Credit: Hubble Heritage Team/ESA/NASA

Still sleepless? Why not make use of that time? You could even contribute to science. The folks over at Galaxy Zoo need your help. They use thousands of volunteers to categorize galaxies so astronomers can better understand the cosmos.

Their web site explains: "The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is taking images of a large portion of the sky and will eventually find a million galaxies. With such a large number of galaxies, astronomers can finally begin to understand how they form and evolve by comparing various populations to each other with large enough numbers to draw real conclusions about their origin.

"But out of these million galaxies, how do we know which are spirals and which are ellipticals? The answer is simple: look at them! Indeed, until now galaxies have been classified by visual inspection of their images. And in fact, technology is of little help here. It turns out that the human brain is far better than a computer at recognising the patterns that divide ellipticals from spirals. ... There are just too many galaxies for even the most dedicated of astronomers to look at. We need thousands of people to inspect galaxy images and to classify them as spiral or elliptical."

The first phase of Galaxy Zoo is completed, but they're gearing up for phase two, where volunteers will look at images of merging galaxies. So sign up and use your stargazing abilities for the good of science.