Highlights So Far

The Andromeda Project launched just over a week ago and what a week it’s been! The community that has formed behind this project is enthusiastic and prolific. Nearly 750,000 classifications have now been completed.

When we originally set out on this project we thought that somewhere between 50 and 100 people looking at each image would give us the statistics we need to be able to say how many clusters and galaxies were present in each image. We began hoping to get 50 views on each image but just a week later, more than 4,000 of the images already have had 80 views! This is actually fantastic news! With 80 people looking at each image, we will be able to produce some amazing and robust results. We’ll bring you more on the analysis of your clicks as soon as we can.

To celebrate almost 750,000 image classifications (that’s about one per second since launch!) we’ve gathered some highlights from our Talk site, to show off some of the images in the Andromeda Project, and some of the awesome collections you’ve produced on Talk. Above are just three really great images that you’ve spotted in the data and discussed on Talk.

There are several collections of these HII regions on Talk. What appear as blue, glowing globules in the Andromeda Project colours are in fact recent star-forming regions where young stars are now illuminating the material around them. User jasonjason has put together a nice collection here.

The main focus of the site is to find star clusters, which you’ve been doing in huge numbers. There are some great sets of different types of clusters on Talk. There are Bright Compact Clusters from jules, Open Clusters from wrights_kentucky, and even a set of synthetic clusters from jasonjason.

Of course galaxies are often the most beautiful objects in the Andromeda Project image and the community have been quick to collect them up on Talk. There are a lot of galaxy sets, but I thought I’d highlight this one from user Paula Giacomo and this SDSS galaxy set by JeanTate.

If you find interesting objects you can also comment on them and collect them up on Talk, which you can read more about on this blog post. There is lots more on this blog too, including a very handy FAQ list that answers questions about synthetic clusters and more.

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