Zooniverse: Disk Detective

Research the universe. Expand humanity's knowledge.
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geckzilla
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Zooniverse: Disk Detective

Post by geckzilla » Fri Jan 31, 2014 12:22 am

diskdetective.jpg
Disk Detective

This one is easy to learn. I classified a few today and finding odd things seems to be normal. Be forewarned -- your imagination will be inventing all sorts of things to explain the strange appearance of nondescript blobs and there are so many that most of them likely will not have an answer anytime soon.

http://www.diskdetective.org/
Just call me "geck" because "zilla" is like a last name.

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bystander
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> 1M Classifications of Possible Planetary Habitats

Post by bystander » Wed Jan 07, 2015 5:56 pm

'Disk Detectives' Top 1 Million Classifications in Search for Planetary Habitats
NASA | GSFC | Goddard Media Studios | 2015 Jan 06
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
Citizen scientists using the NASA-sponsored website DiskDetective.org have logged 1 million classifications of potential debris disks and disks surrounding young stellar objects (YSO). This data will help provide a crucial set of targets for future planet-hunting missions.

By combing through objects identified in an infrared survey made with NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, Disk Detective aims to find two types of developing planetary environments: YSO disks, which are less than 5 million years old and contains large quantities of gas, and debris disks, which tend to be older than 5 million years, and contain belts of rocky or icy debris.

Computer searches already have identified some objects seen by the WISE survey as potential dust-rich disks. But software can't distinguish them from other infrared-bright sources, such as galaxies, interstellar dust clouds and asteroids. There may be thousands of potential planetary systems in the WISE data, but the only way to know for sure is to inspect each source by eye. ...

Volunteer 'Disk Detectives' Top 1 Million Classifications of Possible Planetary Habitats
NASA GSFC Press Release | 2015 Jan 06
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