Zooniverse

Has anyone here used Zooniverse.org before? It's a website that has a collection of citizen scientist projects that you can work on. You assist scientists by helping sift through data that a computer might misinterpret.

I just found out about it the other day. I read about it on an astronomy website (it might have actually been Astronomy Magazine's website, I don't remember lol). So far I've done a bit with Planet Hunters and Disk Detectives. Planet Hunters looks for dips in light from stars found by the Kepler project. Sudden short dips could be caused by a planet transiting the star. Disk Detectives looks at multiple telescope images to determine if a star has an accretion disk around it that could possible form new planets.

It's a pretty cool way to pass some time online and actually help in real science.

thats cool Goken, im going to check it out today
thanks for sharing this

I've been playing with this this morning! Thank you!

Update.

I have now participated in all of the space related Zooniverse projects because I love space stuff. My favorites are Planet Hunters, Disk Detective, Galaxy Zoo, and Asteroid Zoo. Galaxy Zoo usually gives you pretty boring pictures but every once in a while you get some fantastic pictures of far off galaxies. It can be so beautiful. The Milky Way Project gives you some stunning pictures but the actual science part is pretty boring. It might be fifth on my list.

I have doing them for years. I love being able to actual contribute with just my abilities. I love the space ones, but the war journal one got me hooked for a while.

It seems incredibly tedious, which normally wouldn't be an issue because I have patience, I just don't seem to be neurologically geared toward finding information from ambiguity in the way they need. :pinch:

I was enjoying Snapshot Serengeti! I kept telling my husband "I FOUND *insert cool animal here*" as if I was responsible for the pictures (they're done though )

The whale one I find important to me but hard to keep going because there's nothing new to see.

I also tried the fossil finding one but I realized I don't know rocks very well lol. so I found an 'identify this marine life' one which was RIGHT up my ally but they were done

It was really cool to be able to use the knowledge I already had, be able to add to it, and contribute to science too!