Galaxy Zoo Quench is a Zooniverse project.

The Zooniverse is a collection of web-based Citizen Science projects that use the efforts and abilities of volunteers to help reseachers deal with the flood of data that confronts them.

Our Projects

We currently have 22 projects on subjects ranging from astronomy, to climatology, to biology, to humanities.

Galaxy Zoo Quench

Experience science from beginning to end.

Stage 2: Going On Now!

In this stage we are undertaking the 'Data Analysis and Discussion' portion of the project. Nobody has ever attempted an online science project quite like this before, so it's an interesting few months! Please check out this blog post for more details about the process so far, or visit TALK and ZooTools to get involved!

Stage 2

Quench Boost

Thanks to your wonderful effort we have all the extra classifications we need from the boost phase. Continue to be involved by exploring the existing data on ZooTools and discussing your analysis results on Quench Talk. We've made a series of blog posts breaking down some of the analysis tasks into bite-size chunks: please read and comment! Here is Quench Post #1, Post #2, Post #3, and Post #4.

Project timeline

The classification stage of the project lasted approximately 8 weeks; we are currently in the middle of the data reduction and analysis stages.

  • July 9th: Call for volunteers
  • July 18th: Stage 1 Galaxy classification begins
  • August 1st: First set of classifications completed
  • August 1st to September 9th: Stage 2 Initial data analysis and discussion
  • August 23rd to 25th: Stage 1.5 Quench Boost (supplemental classifications)
  • August 25th — ongoing: Stage 2 Continue data analysis and discussion in ZooTools and Talk
  • TBD: Stage 3 Submit article draft to the Galaxy Zoo science team for internal review
  • TBD: Submit article to a professional journal

Note: Science timelines are subject to uncertainty. We'll do our best to keep on track, but participants should expect the unexpected!

The science

Galaxies broadly fall into two main categories: blue, star-forming, disky spirals and red and 'dead' ellipticals. Of course, we know from Galaxy Zoo publications that there are also extremely interesting populations of red spirals and blue ellipticals that have provided key insights into galaxy evolution (see red spirals and blue ellipticals). In recent years, we have made great strides in understanding the mechanisms that help galaxies transition from star-forming to non-star-forming (and sometimes back!). But there remain many open questions and stones unturned. More

Relation to Galaxy Zoo

Galaxy Zoo started back in July 2007, with a data set made up of a million galaxies imaged by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (who still provide new images for the site today. With so many galaxies, we assumed it would take years for volunteers to work through them all, but within 24 hours of launch we were stunned to be receiving almost 70,000 classifications an hour. In the end, more than 50 million classifications were received by the project during its first year, contributed by more than 150,000 people.

Galaxy Zoo Quench aims to extend upon the original Galaxy Zoo project by asking volunteers to not only participate in classifying galaxies, but offering them the opportunity to analyse data and co-write a paper with the results. The website was built by the same team that brought you Galaxy Zoo, using much of the same techniques and technology.