In my perambulations around the Web the other day I discovered a very geeky site, that I have since used quite a bit, called Galaxy Zoo.

Astronomers have taken over a million pictures of galaxies in space - and now they need to categorise them. Currently, the only way that we can categorise galaxies is by having a person look at a picture of a galaxy and then decide whether it’s an elliptical or spiral shape. It turns out that computers can’t really do this job very well at all, so what a group of astronomers have done is provide the Galaxy Zoo website, where anybody can categorise galaxies after a quick ten minute tutorial.

The thing about pictures of galaxies is that some of them are quite spectacular; hence the site can be quite addictive. It’s very cool to be part of a real astronomy science project too.

Find more fascinating astronomy facts in the NZS.com directory.

Image from Flickr.