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stephan ostanock camarillo ca. — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 04:07:53 GMT

just love your website new user very happy to have found it thanks for being there to explore.

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Eric, Salinas, CA — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 14:09:14 GMT

What a cool article Alan! That's so cool that regular people are helping astronomers categorize galaxies. There sure are a lot of them to look at so the more help the merrier. I also enjoyed the month in space pictures. Keep bringing us the good science stuff!

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Chris Eldridge, harrisburg PA — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 14:37:10 GMT

Sounds like something the planetary society should have been involved with! They are still capable of good things... just a bit lost on their solar sail initiative last I checked. They were helping pay for the restoration and use of a 1m telescope to look for planets which I did support!

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Adam Helsinger — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 20:15:13 GMT

What an excellent crowdsourcing opportunity.

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Professor John Frink, Springfield — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 20:21:35 GMT

Allowing laymen to participate in the categorization and documentation of galaxies is, in my professional opinion, dangerous and irresponsible, ma-hey. Who knows what insights will never be discovered because an untrained eye was turned upon these images? I'm sorry, but this Galaxy Zoo is the beginning of the end of astronomy as we know it, claven.

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Robbie Withey New Bern, NC — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:11:25 GMT

I've enjoyed galaxyzoo since they started(first found out about it here!thanks,alan!)It allows everyday folks to assist in helping categorize the millions of galaxies in the cosmos. without our help, those who are in the fields of astronomy & cosmology would simply be overwhelmed at the amount of photos and data to pour over. i don't agree w/prof.frink in thinking it(galaxyzoo) would doom astronomy. quite the contrary, i belive it has reinvigorated the public because of the access to some great photos and a chance to be part of an historical undertaking in astronomy as a layman. those of us who have participated have done so with enthusiasm and are glad to assist the scientists in classifying. to my fellow galaxyzookeepers: i salute you! keep up the good work!!

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Darrell Messbarger — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:17:04 GMT

One of the most intelligent uses of available manpower since the building of the pyramids. I am always delighted to see a pragmatic approach to goals such as this.

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Mascali, Catania - Italy — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:38:03 GMT

I arrived here by chance and I have to say that Alan post is really fascinating: I added you on my favourites...
Greetings from Italy

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Serge, Atlanta, GA — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:50:48 GMT

So long as the ones interpreting the results keep in mind how the data were collected, this is a great project! Most of the information desired in a project of this scope is of a statistical nature regarding the population of galaxies, and not individual galaxies themselves. There are statistical ways of treating the uncertainties caused by not having professional astronomers doing it.

The point is there is just no way you could get astronomy grad students to look at every single one of those galaxies! In my research in the field of nearby stars my images often contain faint distant galaxies in the background. Because these galaxies fall in the line of sight of a nearby star that I wish to study in detail, I may actually be the first person to see an image of that background galaxy. Seems exciting, but I actually dismiss them! If I were to track every single background galaxy in the images I would never get anything done! It is a good thing that now there is a systematic project to do this by people who can help. It really does not take a lot of training to be able to classify these galaxies.

Serge
dieterich@chara.gsu.edu