Next GZ Hangout: Thursday, May 9th, 15:00 GMT – with special guests!
Our next hangout will be this Thursday, the 9th of May, at 15:00 GMT, which is 8:00 PDT, 11:00 EDT, 16:00 BST, 17:00 CET, 18:00 CAT… and midnight in Japan.
Why Japan? Does that have anything to do with the special guest participant(s)? And why is there an image of a gravitational lens on this blog post?
You’ll have to tune in to see!
The best way to send us a comment during the live hangout is to tweet at us (@galaxyzoo), but you can also leave a comment on this blog post, or on Google Plus, Facebook or YouTube, which we’ll also try to keep an eye on. See you soon!
13 responses to “Next GZ Hangout: Thursday, May 9th, 15:00 GMT – with special guests!”
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- - May 8, 2013
- - May 8, 2013
Galaxy Zoo 
Hope to see some of you, at the RAS on Friday.
Yes – a good chunk of the GZ science team will be at RAS, including all of our most regular Hangout participants (Kevin, Karen, Kyle, and Brooke).
Ah ha! I know who your special guests are (or at least, what they’ll be talking about)!
In today’s Space Warps’ blog post – Engage! – it says: “PS. Aprajita and I will be making a special guest appearance on the regular Galaxy Zoo Hangout tomorrow – tune in for more slightly distorted spacetime chat!“.
Very cool indeed!
Question for the Hangout: do you need to take a spectrum of a candidate lensed object (and of the candidate lens itself) to confirm its status as a space warp?
I do hope you’ll recognize the zooites who are the core team members of Space Warps!
Can’t you infer brown dwarfs from the Wing-Ford bands in the spectra? Or are they markers of only M dwarfs?
Is that a first? An ordinary zooite (me) gets a ‘science gong’ (more than one apparently)? Not sure if I should be pleased or annoyed. What do you think, dear reader?
Pretty sure it was the first instance of a team member blaming a Zooite for getting the gong! Anyway, even red dwarfs are hugely bright compared to brown dwarfs, and the Wing-Ford band is none too strong anyway from M dwarfs. My guess is that one of the IR molecular bands might be the best shot at direct detection of brown dwarfs in galaxy spectra (but it still sounds like a long shot).
Thanks Bill (NGC3314)!
I’m glad I didn’t ask what sort of IMF had been assumed, or examined; in particular, Kroupa or Chabrier? 😉
Anyway, thanks for answering, and especially pointing out that good spectra may help constrain IMFs in ways that even the best photometry cannot. If detailed investigation of lenses strongly suggests higher total stellar masses, presumably spectra can help exclude various IMFs. And microlensing studies in the MW (and satellite galaxies) put limits on at least local IMFs too (won’t help if the hypotheses are that IMFs are far from universal).
Right at the very end, Aprajita mentioned that some of the objects posted on the GZ lens thread have been confirmed as lenses, and that the SW Science Team is continuing to check them (or words to that effect; I’ll transcribe it later, and write it up in that thread).
To what extent have the zooites’ finds been acknowledged as such? For example, does the SW ST make a point of commenting on each and every find, in thread? Do those astronomers who find lenses otherwise acknowledge the zooites’ work? Do they even know of zooites’ existence (hard to imagine they don’t; it’s a small community, and the GZ has made a big splash)?
Thank you for posting this, since I was working that day and couldn’t see it.