New galaxies in Galaxy Zoo

We’re excited to announce the launch of two new image sets on Galaxy Zoo.

Recently your work has helped us classify 34,429 images coming from the DECaLS first data release (DR1). With the release of DECaLS second data release (DR2) we have added 61,595 new galaxies into Galaxy Zoo. DR2 covers a larger portion of the sky than DR1, and has better quality and deeper images then SDSS. These galaxies are taken from the NASA-Sloan Atlas (a catalog of over 140,000 local galaxies in both the optical and UV) and focuses on the larger and brighter galaxies not already covered by DR1, in addition to the galaxies imaged by an extra year’s worth of data.

Example galaxy taken from DECaLS DR2 sample.

Our second image set, appropriately named “the lost set”, is made up of 25,529 SDSS images that should have been included in Galaxy Zoo 2. These galaxies also come from the NASA-Sloan Atlas, but for one reason or another never made it into Galaxy Zoo until now. Once classified, these images will fill in the hole that currently exists in the bright galaxy data set. These SDSS images are in the queue and will go live sometime later this year, depending on the progress being made on DECaLS DR2.

Example galaxy taken from “the lost set”.