Source: Universe Today
The Hubble Space Telescope is 20 years old on Saturday and, to mark this anniversary, all the world’s space and astronomy fans have a chance to become part of the Hubble team.
As part of the birthday celebrations NASA’s Space Telescope Science Institute and the online astronomy project Galaxy Zoo are making some 200,000 Hubble images of galaxies available to the public at Galaxy Zoo (www.galaxyzoo.org). They hope that volunteers looking for their own favorite galaxies will join forces to give the venerable telescope a present – classifications of each galaxy which will help astronomers understand how the Universe we see around us formed.
But there’s more to it than that; remember Hanny and the Voorwerp? The Green Peas? Mitch’s mysterious star? For every unexpected Galaxy Zoo discovery there are likely a dozen Hubble Zoo ones.
“The large surveys that Hubble has completed allow us to trace the Universe’s evolution better than ever before,” said University of Nottingham astronomer and Galaxy Zoo team member Dr. Steven Bamford. “The vast majority of these galaxies will never have been viewed by anyone, and yet we need human intuition to make the most of what they are telling us.”
To read more: http://www.universetoday.com/2010/04/22/click-on-hubble-galaxy-zoo-now-includes-hst-images/