<\/p>\n
The story of AstroQuest begins over a hundred years ago, when observatories would recruit volunteers to inspect glass plates, and identify any stars, nebulae or galaxies they could find. These volunteers, many of whom were women, were known as “computers”, because they were needed to analyse huge amounts of data that the astronomers simply couldn\u2019t keep up with.<\/p>\n
In modern times, astronomers are using the latest technology to survey huge numbers of galaxies, and have collected a vast amount of data. Before astronomers can do any science on the galaxies from these surveys, they have to work out exactly where the galaxies actually are in each image. Just as in the early days, this is too much work for astronomers to do by themselves, so they’ve developed computer algorithms to speed the work up. And just like before, they’re asking human volunteers to help as well.<\/p>\n
In our previous project, Galaxy Explorer, citizen scientists were asked to classify galaxies and fit a ring around each one. In AstroQuest, what we’re asking citizen scientists to do is quite different. This is because the algorithm being used to find galaxies in the images has changed.<\/p>\n
The shape of most galaxies usually fits fairly well into a circle or an ellipse, but some galaxy images can be a very strange shape. For instance, galaxies that are colliding can be very irregular, and some galaxies are overlapped in the image by stars and other objects that have gotten in the way.<\/p>\n