95 research outputs found
Galaxy Zoo: Morphological Classification and Citizen Science
We provide a brief overview of the Galaxy Zoo and Zooniverse projects,
including a short discussion of the history of, and motivation for, these
projects as well as reviewing the science these innovative internet-based
citizen science projects have produced so far. We briefly describe the method
of applying en-masse human pattern recognition capabilities to complex data in
data-intensive research. We also provide a discussion of the lessons learned
from developing and running these community--based projects including thoughts
on future applications of this methodology. This review is intended to give the
reader a quick and simple introduction to the Zooniverse.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure; to be published in Advances in Machine Learning
and Data Mining for Astronom
Weather-it missions: a social network analysis perspective of an online citizen inquiry community
Citizen inquiry is an innovative informal science learning approach, which engages members of the general public in scientific investigations sparked by their personal experience of everyday science, and to which other members can contribute. This paper aims to describe the network of interactions and contributions of Weather-it, an online Citizen Inquiry community accommodated by the nQuire-it platform, which involves people in creating and maintaining their own weather missions (investigations). The interaction patterns within Weather-it are mainly explored through social network analysis of community members and missions. The results indicate the quiet and active members within the community, their splitting into sub-communities, and their contribution and data collection methods and preferences. These results provide in-sight into the behaviour of people in such public engagement projects
The challenges of a public data release : behind the scenes of SDSS DR13
The Sloan Digitial Sky Surveys (SDSS) have been collecting imaging and spectoscopic data since 1998. These data as well as their derived data products are made publicly available through regular data releases, of which the 13th took place summer 2016. Although public data releases can be challenging to manage, they significantly increase the impact of a survey, both scientifically and educationally.Postprin
The SDSS SkyServer, Public Access to the Sloan Digital Sky Server Data
The SkyServer provides Internet access to the public Sloan Digital Sky Survey
(SDSS) data for both astronomers and for science education. This paper
describes the SkyServer goals and architecture. It also describes our
experience operating the SkyServer on the Internet. The SDSS data is public and
well-documented so it makes a good test platform for research on database
algorithms and performance.Comment: submitted for publication, original at
http://research.microsoft.com/scripts/pubs/view.asp?TR_ID=MSR-TR-2001-10
Galaxy Zoo: Disentangling the Environmental Dependence of Morphology and Colour
We analyze the environmental dependence of galaxy morphology and colour with
two-point clustering statistics, using data from the Galaxy Zoo, the largest
sample of visually classified morphologies yet compiled, extracted from the
Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We present two-point correlation functions of spiral
and early-type galaxies, and we quantify the correlation between morphology and
environment with marked correlation functions. These yield clear and precise
environmental trends across a wide range of scales, analogous to similar
measurements with galaxy colours, indicating that the Galaxy Zoo
classifications themselves are very precise. We measure morphology marked
correlation functions at fixed colour and find that they are relatively weak,
with the only residual correlation being that of red galaxies at small scales,
indicating a morphology gradient within haloes for red galaxies. At fixed
morphology, we find that the environmental dependence of colour remains strong,
and these correlations remain for fixed morphology \textit{and} luminosity. An
implication of this is that much of the morphology--density relation is due to
the relation between colour and density. Our results also have implications for
galaxy evolution: the morphological transformation of galaxies is usually
accompanied by a colour transformation, but not necessarily vice versa. A
spiral galaxy may move onto the red sequence of the colour-magnitude diagram
without quickly becoming an early-type. We analyze the significant population
of red spiral galaxies, and present evidence that they tend to be located in
moderately dense environments and are often satellite galaxies in the outskirts
of haloes. Finally, we combine our results to argue that central and satellite
galaxies tend to follow different evolutionary paths.Comment: 19 pages, 18 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA
Galaxy Zoo: Motivations of Citizen Scientists
Citizen science, in which volunteers work with professional scientists to
conduct research, is expanding due to large online datasets. To plan projects,
it is important to understand volunteers' motivations for participating. This
paper analyzes results from an online survey of nearly 11,000 volunteers in
Galaxy Zoo, an astronomy citizen science project. Results show that volunteers'
primary motivation is a desire to contribute to scientific research. We
encourage other citizen science projects to study the motivations of their
volunteers, to see whether and how these results may be generalized to inform
the field of citizen science.Comment: 41 pages, including 6 figures and one appendix. In press at Astronomy
Education Revie
Galaxy Zoo: The large-scale spin statistics of spiral galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
We re-examine the evidence for a violation of large-scale statistical
isotropy in the distribution of projected spin vectors of spiral galaxies. We
have a sample of spiral galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky
Survey, with their line of sight spin direction confidently classified by
members of the public through the online project Galaxy Zoo. After establishing
and correcting for a certain level of bias in our handedness results we find
the winding sense of the galaxies to be consistent with statistical isotropy.
In particular we find no significant dipole signal, and thus no evidence for
overall preferred handedness of the Universe. We compare this result to those
of other authors and conclude that these may also be affected and explained by
a bias effect.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS. 8 pages, 5 figure
Galaxy Zoo: Exploring the Motivations of Citizen Science Volunteers
The Galaxy Zoo citizen science website invites anyone with an Internet
connection to participate in research by classifying galaxies from the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey. As of April 2009, more than 200,000 volunteers had made
more than 100 million galaxy classifications. In this paper, we present results
of a pilot study into the motivations and demographics of Galaxy Zoo
volunteers, and define a technique to determine motivations from free responses
that can be used in larger multiple-choice surveys with similar populations.
Our categories form the basis for a future survey, with the goal of determining
the prevalence of each motivation.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figure
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