Wanna Check Out some Galaxies?

One of my favorite lines in the movie Contact is when astronomer Ellie Arroway returns to work after the disaster that destroyed the first “ship” built by humans following alien instructions detected using radio astronomy antennas. At the VLA (where she’s doing her research), she’s met by the mother of all long-distance calls from a wealthy space enthusiast who wants to fund her work. He points out that he’s secretly building a second space craft and asks her, “Wanna go for a ride???”

Of course she jumps at the chance, and the movie then follows her experiences as she takes that ride out to visit the alien intelligence that wants to help humanity out to the stars.

I had a sort of “wanna go for a ride?” moment today when I stumbled across GalaxyZoo.org. This is a place where you can apply your fine visual discrimination skills by helping astronomers classify galaxies. I kid you not; the work that used to be done by grad students is now something that anybody with an eye for detail can do.

So, I went over and registered and did the tutorial (where you learn about the details the astronomers want you to identify), and then took the pre-test. You have to score 8 out of 15 correct answers to get in. Lucky me, I did 14 out of 15! (Of course, I’ve seen a few galaxies in my time… )

Some of the images can be tough, and the classification scheme is not for the easily distracted. But, I find it highly gratifying and I feel like I’m making a little bit of a contribution to astronomy.

Since I’m in a galaxy frame of mind today, here’s a great image from the Spitzer Space Telescope, Chandra Observatory, and the WIYN telescope (operated by the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University, Yale University and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory). They’ve jointly observed one of the biggest galaxy collisions ever seen. The action is taking place about five billion light-years away from us, but due to the great optics and sensitivity of the two observatories, you can clearly see four massive galaxies tangling it up to form an even-more-massive galaxy (eventually). They’re tossing out stars and gas as they go along.

Scenes like this reveal the creation of the most massive galaxies in the universe; basically they form when smaller galaxies crash together. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is swallowing up stars from smaller, dwarf galaxies, but it will likely never look like this scene of galactic bumper cars.