Galaxy Zoo-Hubble

Want to be an astronomer, but don't have a telescope or any of the other fancy kit they usually have?

Worry no more-because we are living in a world where data is being gathered at a far greater rate than it can be studied and turned into information. There are many ways that scientists are trying to cope with this, the best known being the BOINC projects that distribute problems involving massive amounts of data around a cloud of regular people's computers. Some problems, however, are not well suited for computers, and that especially includes pattern recognition.

That is where YOU come in. Our brains are far better at spotting subtle patterns than computers are. As more and more photographic data of the universe has piled up, the public has been enlisted to help classify each object being photographed. The best known of those projects has been Galaxy Zoo. Rather than enlist your unused CPU cycles, this project enlists your spare time and brain power. Very cool stuff.

The Hubble Space Telescope has done so much more than the Heritage images most people are familiar with, and it has produced an utterly unimaginable amount of data. Now there is a Zoo project to try and cope with that-the Galaxy Zoo-Hubble project.

If waste even a few minutes a day playing Solitaire, consider taking a look at this-it's a far more interesting way to kill time, plus you'll be doing SCIENCE!