An Interpretive Study Of Meanings Citizen Scientists Make When Participating In Galaxy Zoo

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trent A. Mankowski ◽  
Stephanie J. Slater ◽  
Timothy F. Slater

A particularly successful effort to engage the public in science has been to move the nearly countless galaxies imaged by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to citizen scientists in a project known widely as Galaxy Zoo (URL; http://www.galaxyzoo.org). By examining the motivations, methods and appeal of Galaxy Zoo to the participating public, other models of citizen science might be purposefully formulated to take advantage of the success exhibited in Galaxy Zoo. In addition, we want to understand the reasons people engage in science in informal settings in order to better enhance teaching methods in formal settings. We pursued an investigation of the underlying reasons for the success of Galaxy Zoo revealed by inductively analyzing contributors posts and discussions through the accompanying Galaxy Zoo online bulletin board. Using a grounded theory approach, we learned that many of these motivations originate in the aesthetic power of astronomical images or the opportunity to become an empowered and contributing scientist, which Galaxy Zoo successfully harnesses, while not compromising the scientific value of the project.

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (H16) ◽  
pp. 689-691 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen L. Masters ◽  

AbstractGalaxy Zoo (www.galaxyzoo.org) is familiar to many as a hugely successful public engagement project. Hundreds of thousands of members of the public have contributed to Galaxy Zoo which collects visual classifications of galaxies in Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Hubble Space Telescope images. Galaxy Zoo has inspired a suite of similar Citizen Science projects known as “The Zooniverse“ (www.zooniverse.org) which now has well over half a million participants. Galaxy Zoo has also shown itself, in a series of peer reviewed papers, to be a fantastic database for the study of galaxy evolution. In this invited talk I described how that public engagement via citizen science is not only an effective means of outreach from data intensive surveys, but if done right can and must also increase the scientific output of the survey.


2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (H16) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Karen L. Masters

AbstractWe live in a universe filled with galaxies with an amazing variety of sizes and shapes. One of the biggest challenges for astronomers working in this field is to understand how all these types relate to each other in the background of an expanding universe. Modern astronomical surveys (like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey) have revolutionised this field of astronomy, by providing vast numbers of galaxies to study. The sheer size of the these databases made traditional visual classification of the types galaxies impossible and in 2007 inspired the Galaxy Zoo project (www.galaxyzoo.org); starting the largest ever scientific collaboration by asking members of the public to help classify galaxies by type and shape. Galaxy Zoo has since shown itself, in a series of now more than 30 scientific papers, to be a fantastic database for the study of galaxy evolution. In this Invited Discourse I spoke a little about the historical background of our understanding of what galaxies are, of galaxy classification, about our modern view of galaxies in the era of large surveys. I finish with showcasing some of the contributions galaxy classifications from the Galaxy Zoo project are making to our understanding of galaxy evolution.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 28-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merita Dollma

Abstract Canyons are among the most interesting geosites created by the erosive activity of the rivers, processes of weathering and erosion or tectonic activity and are distinguished for the aesthetic beauty of the shapes, the labyrinths of the valleys, the steepness of the slopes, the greatness of vertical walls, waterfalls, caves, etc., bearing high scientific, educational and touristic values. Albania has a considerable number of canyons due to the presence of a rich river network flowing through the variety of geological formations and tectonic faults. Outstanding are the wellformed canyons in limestone rocks with almost vertical walls such as Gradec canyon in Çorovoda, Lëngarica canyon in Përmet, Grunas canyon in Theth, etc. The only canyons which are formed on magmatic rocks are the canyons of Devoll. For their values, the most interesting canyons are included in the list of nature monuments as geomonuments. The most magnificent and frequented canyons for tourism in Albania are the Osum canyons, Gradec canyon, Lëngarica canyon and Nivica canyon. These distant impressing landforms, once forgotten and unexplored, are now attracting the attention of many tourists either for admiring their natural scenery, hiking and rafting or for curative tourism. However, despite their values the canyons are not enough known due to lack of information or poor promotion. Filling this gap has served this study where the geotouristic potential of the canyons is evaluated according to four criteria of Knapik.at.al such as accessibility, state of preservation, scientific value and education value (Solarska and Jary, 2010). The database of the canyons is organized in an inventory card which contains general and specific data of each geosite. The final product of this project will be a website that will inform the public and promote the values of the canyons of Albania.


2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 655-661
Author(s):  
Waleed Elsanhoury

Using Sloan Digital Sky Survey SDSS catalog, some intrinsic characteristics of Quasars (10,000 points) are developed of these are the strong correlations between redshifts and other parameters, e.g. combined magnitude, luminosity, and absolute magnitude .Moreover ,the Karlsson peak of our sample is also computed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Putri Maulina

In this contemporary era, the forms of public service in Indonesia have become increasingly practical and instant. Conditions like this to illustrate how the phenomenon of McDonaldization began to plague into public service systems, one of which is with the public service system e-Filing DJP Online. E-Filing DJP Online is an application of public services based on information and communication technology implemented by the state tax execution agency to provide easy access to services for the Taxpayers in Indonesia. The purpose of this study is to see how the principles of McDonaldization are applied in the public service system of tax agencies through the DGT Online e-Filing system. The theory approach used is McDonaldization Theory by George Ritzer, and the concept of Public Service. The method used is qualitative descriptive, with literature review approach. The results show that the DGT Online e-Filing system applies the principles of McDonaldization in the form of its services, namely: efficiency, quantified and qualified services, predictability, control, and ultimately the rationale for irrationality of service.Keywords: McDonaldization, Public Service, Tax, e-Filing


2021 ◽  
Vol 504 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-88
Author(s):  
Abhijeet Anand ◽  
Dylan Nelson ◽  
Guinevere Kauffmann

ABSTRACT In order to study the circumgalactic medium (CGM) of galaxies we develop an automated pipeline to estimate the optical continuum of quasars and detect intervening metal absorption line systems with a matched kernel convolution technique and adaptive S/N criteria. We process ∼ one million quasars in the latest Data Release 16 (DR16) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and compile a large sample of ∼ 160 000 Mg ii absorbers, together with ∼ 70 000 Fe ii systems, in the redshift range 0.35 < zabs < 2.3. Combining these with the SDSS DR16 spectroscopy of ∼1.1 million luminous red galaxies (LRGs) and ∼200 000 emission line galaxies (ELGs), we investigate the nature of cold gas absorption at 0.5 < z < 1. These large samples allow us to characterize the scale dependence of Mg ii with greater accuracy than in previous work. We find that there is a strong enhancement of Mg ii absorption within ∼50 kpc of ELGs, and the covering fraction within 0.5rvir of ELGs is 2–5 times higher than for LRGs. Beyond 50 kpc, there is a sharp decline in Mg ii for both kinds of galaxies, indicating a transition to the regime where the CGM is tightly linked with the dark matter halo. The Mg ii-covering fraction correlates strongly with stellar mass for LRGs, but weakly for ELGs, where covering fractions increase with star formation rate. Our analysis implies that cool circumgalactic gas has a different physical origin for star-forming versus quiescent galaxies.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (S359) ◽  
pp. 441-443
Author(s):  
F. S. Lohmann ◽  
A. Schnorr-Müller ◽  
M. Trevisan ◽  
R. Riffel ◽  
N. Mallmann ◽  
...  

AbstractObservations at high redshift reveal that a population of massive, quiescent galaxies (called red nuggets) already existed 10 Gyr ago. These objects undergo a significant size evolution over time, likely due to minor mergers. In this work we present an analysis of local massive compact galaxies to assess if their properties are consistent with what is expected for unevolved red nuggets (relic galaxies). Using integral field spectroscopy (IFS) data from the MaNGA survey from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), we characterized the kinematics and properties of stellar populations of massive compact galaxies, and find that these objects exhibit, on average, a higher rotational support than a control sample of average sized early-type galaxies. This is in agreement with a scenario in which these objects have a quiet accretion history, rendering them candidates for relic galaxies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 500 (4) ◽  
pp. 4469-4490 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Trussler ◽  
Roberto Maiolino ◽  
Claudia Maraston ◽  
Yingjie Peng ◽  
Daniel Thomas ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT We investigate the environmental dependence of the stellar populations of galaxies in Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 (SDSS DR7). Echoing earlier works, we find that satellites are both more metal-rich (<0.1 dex) and older (<2 Gyr) than centrals of the same stellar mass. However, after separating star-forming, green valley, and passive galaxies, we find that the true environmental dependence of both stellar metallicity (<0.03 dex) and age (<0.5 Gyr) is in fact much weaker. We show that the strong environmental effects found when galaxies are not differentiated result from a combination of selection effects brought about by the environmental dependence of the quenched fraction of galaxies, and thus we strongly advocate for the separation of star-forming, green valley, and passive galaxies when the environmental dependence of galaxy properties are investigated. We also study further environmental trends separately for both central and satellite galaxies. We find that star-forming galaxies show no environmental effects, neither for centrals nor for satellites. In contrast, the stellar metallicities of passive and green valley satellites increase weakly (<0.05 and <0.08 dex, respectively) with increasing halo mass, increasing local overdensity and decreasing projected distance from their central; this effect is interpreted in terms of moderate environmental starvation (‘strangulation’) contributing to the quenching of satellite galaxies. Finally, we find a unique feature in the stellar mass–stellar metallicity relation for passive centrals, where galaxies in more massive haloes have larger stellar mass (∼0.1 dex) at constant stellar metallicity; this effect is interpreted in terms of dry merging of passive central galaxies and/or progenitor bias.


2012 ◽  
Vol 758 (1) ◽  
pp. L23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah R. Loebman ◽  
Željko Ivezić ◽  
Thomas R. Quinn ◽  
Fabio Governato ◽  
Alyson M. Brooks ◽  
...  

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid Pelisoli ◽  
S. O. Kepler ◽  
Detlev Koester

AbstractEvolved stars with a helium core can be formed by non-conservative mass exchange interaction with a companion or by strong mass loss. Their masses are smaller than 0.5 M⊙. In the database of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), there are several thousand stars which were classified by the pipeline as dwarf O, B and A stars. Considering the lifetimes of these classes on the main sequence, and their distance modulus at the SDSS bright saturation, if these were common main sequence stars, there would be a considerable population of young stars very far from the galactic disk. Their spectra are dominated by Balmer lines which suggest effective temperatures around 8 000-10 000 K. Several thousand have significant proper motions, indicative of distances smaller than 1 kpc. Many show surface gravity in intermediate values between main sequence and white dwarf, 4.75 < log g < 6.5, hence they have been called sdA stars. Their physical nature and evolutionary history remains a puzzle. We propose they are not H-core main sequence stars, but helium core stars and the outcomes of binary evolution. We report the discovery of two new extremely-low mass white dwarfs among the sdAs to support this statement.


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