Finished with two more sets of galaxy images!

I’m happy to report that in the last several days, we’ve simultaneously finished the initial sets of galaxies from both the DECaLS survey and the second subset of simulated galaxies from Illustris. This has meant the completion (since last September) of more than 50,000 galaxies seen 40 times apiece, for more than 2 MILLION classifications.

So far, your work is helping reveal new insights based on this deeper data. One very preliminary result: as we’d predicted, the better conditions in DECaLS (bigger camera, better night sky seeing, larger telescope mirror) are revealing galaxies that were classified in SDSS as smooth, but in fact with faint or extended disks and features that are now visible. This is really exciting, and is helping to modify our ideas of the assembly histories of these galaxies.

Comparison of the Galaxy Zoo vote fractions for ~10,000 galaxies detected in both SDSS and DECaLS. The bright yellow dip below the red line in the left panel indicates that galaxies in DECaLS are less likely to be classified as ‘smooth’ based on the improved data. (Image K.W. Willett)

The Galaxy Zoo site is still active – we’ve reactivated a few of the DECaLS DR1 galaxies to slightly improve our statistics, but shortly we’re going to add new sets of (real images) to continue the next phase. I’ll post more as soon as we’ve finalized our plans.

As always, our sincere thanks! Time to start our analysis and continue the science…