Preethi's Cross-Eyed Galaxy

Remember this object from back in February? It turned up in a paper that I was reading today, going by the name of Preethi’s cross-eyed galaxy.

The paper, by Preethi Nair (now in Italy) and Roberto Abraham from the University of Toronto, is going to be really important as we analyze data from Zoo 2 and from Galaxy Zoo : Hubble. As part of her thesis work, Preethi examined over 14000 galaxies – twice each, to check for consistency (!) – in order to produce the largest detailed morphological catalogue in existence. We’ll be comparing your results to hers, and hopefully showing that the classifications for the other 280,000 or so galaxies in Zoo 2 are as reliable as her 14,000.

Or at least, that’s the theory. In practice I’ve spent the day trying to be sure I understand which of her objects match which of ours. But seeing an old friend – albeit with a new name – crop up still made me smile.