Another Zoo meetup, and a Zoo celebrity meets some of the team

We’ve all read the story of Hanny’s Voorwerp, and about two weeks ago we were lucky enough here in the UK to have the Voorwerp’s discoverer come and visit us again, meeting some of the team and catching up with some fellow volunteers at another Galaxy Zoo meetup. On her first day here, Hanny first visited some of the Zoo members here at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation in Portsmouth, workplace of Zoo team members Daniel, Steven and Bob (and of course myself). After meeting some of the team, Hanny got an invitation to join the meeting the observational group at the ICG has each week to tell us about the discovery of the Voorwerp, and so that everyone could get an update from Daniel on the latest goings on on that front. There’s a lot of interest from all the astronomers here, not just those already working on Galaxy Zoo.

On Saturday, myself and Hanny travelled up to Winchester to visit the INTECH science centre and planetarium, catching up with many other Zoo volunteers and our forum moderator Alice. You can catch up on the many photos and happenings on the forum thread for the meetup! The centre’s notable for having an exhibit based on SDSS, the survey from which Galaxy Zoo gets its images.

We took Sunday as an opportunity to travel up to Oxford – here’s Hanny and Zookeeper Kevin together! The social side of Galaxy Zoo is clearly still going strong, and more meetups are already being planned in the forums.