Galaxy Zoo: morphologies derived from visual inspection of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey ★

In order to understand the formation and subsequent evolution of galaxies one must first distinguish between the two main morphological classes of massive systems: spirals and early-type systems. This paper introduces a project, Galaxy Zoo, which provides visual morphological classifications for nearly one million galaxies, extracted from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). This achievement was made possible by inviting the general public to visually inspect and classify these galaxies via the internet. The project has obtained more than 4 10 7 individual classifications made by 10 5 participants. We discuss the motivation and strategy for this project, and detail how the classifications were performed and…

• NS
  National Science Foundation
• UD
  U.S. Department of Energy
• NA
  National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• AP
  Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
• PU
  Princeton University
• OS
  Ohio State University
• UO
  University of Washington
• JH
  Johns Hopkins University
• UO
  University of Pittsburgh
• CW
  Case Western Reserve University
• DU
  Drexel University
• UB
  Universität Basel
• UO
  University of Portsmouth
• NM
  New Mexico State University
• CA
  Chinese Academy of Sciences
• M
  Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
• MF
  Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik
• MF
  Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie
• SA
  Science and Technology Facilities Council

  Awards: ST/F00298X/1, ST/F002335/1
• UN
  U.S. Naval Observatory
• F
  Fermilab
• LA
  Los Alamos National Laboratory