Galaxy Zoo Hunters Help Make Another Discovery

(Credit: Carolin Cardamone and Sloan Digital Sky Survey)

A while ago I wrote a post about the work that Galaxy Zoo volunteers are doing to help scientists classify galaxies. Since it’s launch  in 2007, over 230,000 volunteers from all over the world have helped classify one million images of galaxies taken by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. In February 2009, Galaxy Zoo 2 was launched , and volunteers were asked to  further analyze 250,000 of the brightest galaxies.

While searching through the images, volunteers came across a number of objects that stood out. They were small, fuzzy balls,  bright green in colour – Galaxy Zoo users called them “Green Peas”.

On further analysis of the Green Peas, scientists discovered that they were small, compact, low mass galaxies that were forming stars at 10x the rate of the Milky way, and are now recognised as a unique class of galaxies.

You can read all about the process of writing the paper on the Galaxy Zoo Blog, and a copy of the Green Peas paper can be found here.

Well done Galaxy Zoo Hunters!