My Latest Addiction!

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a news snippet talking about a new website being launched. I noted it down to have a look-see as it is the sort of thing I am curious about and I thought my nephew might like it too. Last Sunday, I finally got around to having a look and was instantly hooked! What is this amazing website, I hear you thinking. It's called GalaxyZoo2 and it's basically an online database of thousands of images of the galaxies out there in our night skies. They are asking for people to help them classify the galaxies as it seems the human eye is a better judge of the subtleties than a computer program.

Here are a couple of beauties I've been asked about this week.

Yes, there are a lot of images of blobs but believe it or not, even they need to be classified because as technology improves, it may be possible to get a closer look at them. The site is huge but interesting. The sign up form has a tick box to say you are over 5 years old (!!) so pretty much anyone can have a go. There was one young man on the newbies forum this week who 'found' this one - how exciting would that be?

Apparently it's a planetary nebula called PN G164.8+31.1 - rather boring name for such a wonderful thing. Anyhoo - go have a look and take your kids with you - it's interesting, educational and pretty much child-safe from what I've seen. Click on the pictures to take you to their info pages - you can zoom in and out and have a look around if you'd like :) Have fun!