been followed up on the
Isaac Newton and William
Herschel Telescopes on the
Canaries, Gemini South in
Chile, the WIYN telescope
the IRAM radio telescope
in Spain’s Sierra Nevada.
Galaxy Zoo has also won
precious observing time
and gained data from
orbiting space telescopes
including Swift, GALEX,
Chandra,
XMM-Newton
Suzaku and perhaps most
excitingly
the
Hubble
Space Telescope. Thus,
in addition to the original
SDSS data there are high chances that volunteers will
be looking at remote galaxies and parts of space never
seen before by human eyes.
The second and third iterations of Galaxy Zoo further
extended the range of surveys and what was asked
of the Zooite population. More detailed observations
Colour observations of galaxies were made which
deduced recent star formation history. For example
blue stars are the “rock
stars of the cosmos” as they
live fast and die young,
burning up their fuel in only
100 million years or so.
The third project, Galaxy
Zoo:
Hubble
involved
Zooites looking back to the
distant past. Drawn from
Hubble surveys, th e light
from galaxies billions of
years old was compared
to light from galaxies now
to determine the footprints
and
growth
(active
black holes, mergers, star
formations).
Credit: Galaxy Zoo Forum
The current and fourth
iteration, Galaxy Zoo: CANDELS adds the most up to
date and distant images of our local cosmos to the
mountain of available data than ever. In addition to
3 installed during the Shuttle Atlantis’ Hubble Servicing
(Cosmic Assembly Near-Infrared Deep Extragalactic
Legacy) survey. Zooites can look back into history
farther than before.
Image #5: But for the absence of gravity, astronaut Andrew Feustel, perched
on the end of the remote manipulator system arm, would be a bit top heavy
as he helps to install the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) during a May 2009
spacewalk to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope. Out of frame is veteran
astronaut John Grunsfeld, his spacewalking crewmate. The pair kicked off
Credit: NASA
www.RocketSTEM .org
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