Вот авторы проекта письмо прислали, там в том числе и по данному топику кое-что есть:
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Dear Galaxy Zoo member,
We know that you'd like to hear more about how things are going. We've
just started the next stage of our exciting project - we need to
understand what biases there are in our results, and so if you visit
the site at
www.galaxyzoo.org now you'll see some odd images.
1. PROGRESS REPORT
THANK YOU everyone for taking part in this exciting astronomy project. In the
last newsletter we said we were aiming for 20 classifications per galaxy, and
with the help of 100,000 of you, we've smashed that target. Every galaxy has
now been classifed by more than 30 of you, and you all turn out to be fabulous
astronomers!
We have been starting to process the data and getting out some
important science results, which we will be sure to tell you about (we
will be posting updates on the forum
www.galaxyzooforum.org). The
first papers aren't too far from being done, and we recently had our
first science meeting (
http://tinyurl.com/24qr2o).
While we're still working on the details of our analysis, we've tested your
classifications against previous studies where astronomers have looked at a few
thousand galaxies (the largest sample was by our very own Kevin, the
first results from which are in this technical paper -
http://xxx.arxiv.org/abs/0709.3015) and we are pleased to see that
your results agree really well with theirs.
This is great - it means that your classifications are as good as
those done by professional astronomers, and we have many more galaxies
which is all important.
2. WHAT NEXT?
The final task for us is to check that we understand exactly why you classified
the galaxies the way you did, and how that might affect our final
results. If you log in today you're likely to notice some changes in
the objects you see on Galaxy Zoo - such as images in black and white
for example. Please just carry on
classifying as normal. In fact, even if you haven't logged on for a
while, it would be of
immense help if you could all come back today. If you want a clue as
to why we are doing this, see this article from the Daily Telegraph -
http://tinyurl.com/2hgkag.
Once we've finished our checks, the first phase of Galaxy Zoo will be
over. However, we're working hard on Galaxy Zoo 2.0, which will ask
for more detailed
classifications and (hopefully) will look beyond the galaxies in the
Sloan survey.
Given the quality of the work you've done so far, we reckon that you
can do much more than just divide spirals from ellipticals. The new
site should go live early in 2008.
3. FOLLOW UP
We recently passed a major milestone in Galaxy Zoo, when we
submitted the first observing proposals based on your discoveries.
We're hoping to be able to use telescopes at Kitt Peak
(
http://www.noao.edu/kpno/) to chase some of the gravitational lenses
that have been found in the data. We're also following up the work of
those of you who responded to a request for close pairs of galaxies
(
http://www.galaxyzooforum.org/index.php?topic=6732.0). Our proposals
are now assessed by a committee of astronomers who decide who gets to
use the telescope, and we should hear back in early December.
Finally, thanks for all the hard work. The excitement is just beginning!
Chris & The Galaxy Zoo team.