Galaxy Zoo

Last year I posted about Stardust@home, an open effort to locate interstellar dust particles with a virtual microscope. If you like astronomy but searching for tiny impacts is too small-scale, here's something you might find exciting. On the opposite end of the size spectrum, we have Galaxy Zoo, a project for identifying entire galaxies.

Computers can't keep up with the vast reams of data being collected by digital survey telescopes. Humans are needed to catalogue hundreds of thousands of galaxies that might slip through the cracks of software analysis. Just like with Stardust@home, you take a short test to learn about galactic identification, and then get to work categorizing images.

Click here to learn more about the project and enlist as an amateur space explorer.