Your new favourite galaxy
The first two editions of Galaxy Zoo 2’s Top Ten Galaxies produced a shocking result. Sitting proudly on top in both cases was a completely undistinguished elliptical.Things are different now; a new entry to the chart has taken first place, and so we proudly present Galaxy Zoo’s new favourite galaxy :
To encourage you to make friends with more galaxies, we’ll change the rules from here on in; we’ll only count galaxies which are favourited between top ten updates. Next time’s chart might look very different – and we might have a different number 1.
Galaxy Zoo 
Is this some kind of weird conspiracy?
Interesting new rules, Chris. Why not ?
JKHC.
I can’t see why anyone would even consider it a fav but that’s just my opinion. Mine are full of clear spirals and interesting merger/distorted galaxies.
Matt
Hear hear evil dragon! Same with my favourites. Logic surely suggests there has to be something wrong with the way the top 10 are selected. Too weird otherwise.
I don’t seem to get that many really ‘exciting’ galaxies as Evil Dragon would see it.
Surely the choice of a persons favourite depends on the person so everyones choices will be different.
I happen to like that one so I guess that makes me one of the weird ones eh? LOL
I still say there’s a bug in the favourite count. Sorry!
This is clearly some kind of joke, but not very funny.
Where’s the “I Don’t Believe It” icon when you need it…
I realise that whilst classic spirals do have a certain universal aesthetic appeal, other galaxies have points of interest other than their visual allure – but can someone explain this one to me?
If it’s #1 then there must be Zooites who can explain what the appeal is…
If the next number one is a faint fuzzy blob I will certainly know the fix is in!!
Gremlins, conspiracy or lots of weird people? I’m leaning towards the latter…:)
Well as the saying goes – “One man’s meat is another man’s poison”.
Very interesting….
The people that chose it might live there.
before the arrival of the “Invert image” button, if one wanted to find out how the galaxy looked inverted, one had to ‘favourite’ it, then access the SDSS page via ‘My Galaxies’… so i wonder, whether the Top Ten software filters out those galaxies, that get unmarked as favourites again….
anyone happens to know this?
soppdrake, that comment made me LOL
But like kit, I prefer the ‘glitch in the counting system’ argument.
The same sort of glitch that causes the “correct” choice in Galaxy Wars to so often be on the left side. And lately Ive been offered pure round ellipticals as the opponent in the ‘prominent spiral arms’ battles. Hmmm, how to decide….
But my backup argument is that, like me, most people clicked as a favorite galaxy the first one they were seeing when the option became available. Just to see how the ‘favorite’ subroutine worked.
So I can also agree with heng about the possibility that this galaxy has since been unfavorited.
Whether a galaxy is a model of outer space beauty or it’s an example of simplicity and weirdness, one way or another, they all get a chance and if this one got the top seat then let it be, after all the galaxies don’t judge themselves, we do it for them. Nothing is won or done by throwing stones at something that’s light years away from us.