Date: December 6, 2010
Title: Participating in Professional Science
Podcaster: Thomas Hofstätter
Link: If you have any questions, comments or suggestions to the podcast, feel free to write me an email to hidden-space (at) gmx (dot) at or visit me at my website at www.hidden-space.at.tf!
Description: This podcast discusses the topic of citizen participation in science. The main view is on the project “Galaxy Zoo” which has been released in 2007 and is a very successful project to let people participate in professional science.
Bio: Born in 1993 near Vienna, Austria, Europe. Upper High School with focus on Computer Science. Interested in extreme small and extreme big, devious and uninvestigated things. My main aim is to bring astronomy to public and to establish secular interest in astronomy, physics and mathematics. Host of :: The Hidden Space Project :: at http://hidden-space.at.tf.”
Today’s sponsor: This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” is sponsored anonymously.
Transcript:
Hello and welcome to this episode of 365 Days of Astronomy. My name is Thomas Hofst‰tter and I am the host of :: The Hidden Space Project :: at www.hidden-space.at.tf.
[Leon:] And I’m Leon Dombroski from the state of Connecticut in the United States.
In this episode, we are going to talk about projects that let citizens participate in professional science. We will especially discuss the project “Galaxy Zoo” and how scientists can work together with hobby astronomers.
[Leon:] Astronomy and Astronomical Observations are an expensive field of science. Scientists need huger and huger telescopes to obtain further knowledge. Amateur astronomers never ever have the chance to afford such telescopes to participate in these fields of astronomy.
Nevertheless, amateurs like Anthony Wesley from Australia were the first to detect e.g. impacts on Jupiter this year when he watched a video of Jupiter taken with his own telescope. It’s not possible for professional astronomers to watch all regions of the sky with their huge telescopes.
[Leon:] So they have to specialize on certain parts of observations. That’s the chance for amateurs to participate: They can work together with professionals exchanging data and watching greater fields of tonight’s sky. By doing so, a high number of people can work together via the Internet to collect data and push our knowledge further.
An other way is pointed out by the project “Galaxy Zoo”. This project is made for “normal” citizens to participate in analyzing galaxies. It was created in 2007 by Chris Lintott and Kevin Schawinski and allows professional scientists to have analyzed thousands of galaxies within a very short amount of time.
[Leon:] The system runs as follows: The users get to see images of a certain galaxy of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and get the chance to analyze its shape. You can for instance choose whether the galaxy has a spiral, edge-on or an elliptical shape. After having chosen the main type of the object, you can specify your vote by e.g. counting the number of arms or deciding how prominent the central bulge is.
The project was brought to public on July 11, 2007 when Chris Lintott got the chance to talk about it for two minutes on BBC. Some hours later, the server broke down because of the high number of people who tried out to classify galaxies. For hours, people just got to see “Server down” when they wanted to reach the site of Galaxy Zoo.
[Leon:] Moreover, GoogleMail closed the account because they decided that the high amount of mails (over 10 000), they received was abnormal. Most mails were from people who wanted to point out that the server was down. After some time, Galaxy Zoo was able to rent servers from Amazon because they were just needed for the time around Xmas.
After the computer specialists at the John Hopkins University where the project is located set up a new more powerful server, people began sending mails asking how to classify certain unusual shapes of galaxies. The staff working on this project hadn’t even a chance to answer all incoming mails. So they decided to start a forum where users can help themselves. People classifying huge amounts of galaxies began calling themselves “Zookeepers” and organized themselves.
[Leon:] At the second day, there were unbelievable 75 000 classifications in just one hour. Until spring 2010, more than 180 000 people have classified about 350 galaxies each. That means that every galaxy has been classified for about 60 (!) times. That’s definitely more than scientists normally are able to classify.
Since the beginning of 2009, several new projects have gone online. You can now for instance classify thousands of images from the Hubble Space Telescope using an improved user interface that collects even more and detailed data. Also other projects went online where you can e.g. count and classify craters on the moon, find supernovas, classify merging galaxies or analyze solar storms. At the time, there are more than 320 000 volunteers helping at the projects pooled under the name “Zooniverse”.
[Leon:] All in all, citizen participation has become a necessary part of scientific analysis. Interested citizens from all over the world have the chance to come together to help professionals, get to know people having the same hobby and have fun.
That’s it for today. I hope, you enjoyed it. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, write me an email to hidden-space (at) gmx (dot) at or visit me at my website at www.hidden-space.at.tf and observe basic questions of astronomy’s past and future as well as hidden and devious facts.
Thanks for listening and clear-skies!
[Leon:] Good bye for now!
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
=====================
The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Astrosphere New Media Association. Audio post-production by Preston Gibson. Bandwidth donated by libsyn.com and wizzard media. Web design by Clockwork Active Media Systems. You may reproduce and distribute this audio for non-commercial purposes. Please consider supporting the podcast with a few dollars (or Euros!). Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org. Until tomorrow…goodbye.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks