The Milky Way Project Talk

Lack of support for this project? :[

  • chelseanr by chelseanr

    I've been a part of zooniverse projects since the very first galaxy zoo project and have participated in almost all of them, and I'm really sad to see that there's not a healthy thriving forum community for this project. These boards that you guys have are really great for the tagging of keywords but outside of that it really seems like no one reads them.

    I do these projects because I enjoy taking part and classifying things for science, but at the same time it's fun to share your discoveries with others, or discuss oddities.

    Would it be possible to maybe put a regular message board in alongside this one thats good for things like albums and key wording? And also it would be nice to see maybe a little more info from the scientists but I know that they are busy so that's not a huge deal!

    I really enjoy this project and would love to see a healthy thriving community behind it!

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  • Gaumondd by Gaumondd

    I totally agree. The fun in this is the learning. I want to learn what I'm looking for and what I'm seeing even if it's just a guess from the scientists. I think I read that the red speres might be protostars. Is that a hypothesis?

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  • chelseanr by chelseanr

    I read the wiki page on protostars and how they form, and in my lay-mans understanding they are balls of gas and dust that are heating up under the pressure of gravity to eventually form "T Tauri Stars" which then form main sequence stars. So to me that kind of sounds like if you think of gravity as a piece of cloth the molecules are all falling inward to the lowest part of that piece of cloth and warming as they slide together, so we see the warmth of them collecting before they become stars.

    Pretty damn cool if I might say so myself :] True infant stars.

    wiki page : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protostar

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  • Gaumondd by Gaumondd

    I want to know what the scientists think the red disks are. What are the bright centers? I saw one with two bright centers and one with the bright spot beside it. Could a scientist explain this to me or at least give me his or her hypothesis? I am also getting frustrated. I would like some feedback. The way to keep people inspired is to let them know they are doing science and give them some info about what they are "observing".

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  • KhalilaRedBird by KhalilaRedBird in response to Gaumondd's comment.

    gaumondd
    I want to know what the scientists think the red disks are. What are the bright centers? I saw one with two bright centers and one with the bright spot beside it. Could a scientist explain this to me or at least give me his or her hypothesis? I am also getting frustrated. I would like some feedback. The way to keep people inspired is to let them know they are doing science and give them some info about what they are "observing".

    I share your concerns about lack of response on questions and such from the scientists. I have been fortunate to get at least one particular matter addressed, but another one is still floating and waiting. On the red disks with bright spots inside -- various colors inside, sometimes a second bright spot -- I think they are planetary nebula. I base this on using the GLIMPSE viewer at http://www.alienearths.org/glimpse/ to view the Milky Way. There are images of pushpins highlighting some known structures in the galaxy, including prominent bubbles and planetary nebulae. The planetary nebulae look just like what we are seeing, from the same broad collection of sources. At first I thought we were seeing artifacts, but now I think we are seeing the red rings as what they are -- hot rings -- and the centers as stars -- more than one, sometimes, as they can be binaries. I have been locating the objects I have viewed (concentrating on the ones nearest galactic center, because that's where I'm fascinated at the moment) using the GLIMPSE viewer and pasting the link to the same location in the comments on the object. See my NEAR CENTER collection.

    I was told earlier by other contributors that the spikes on spiky stars are artifacts. I now doubt that that is 100% true, as there is more substance to what I'm seeing in the spikes as they differ from start to star. Just another topic for discussion.

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  • Kerry_Wallis by Kerry_Wallis

    I only recently joined the project & am loving it. Its been a dream to both look at these pictures and take part. I've learnt so much but feel there is still so much to learn. Sometimes I worry I'm labelling things wrong.

    I'd also love some kind of indication of % completed if that kind of thing can even be generated? Also an option to be updated by e-mail when a picture I've commented on has another comment posted so I can keep up with the ones I'm interested in (saves trawling back through each one to check?).

    These may sound like complaints but they truly are not. I feel honoured to be part of this 😃

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  • Feylin by Feylin

    yea I totally agree.
    I've just joined the project, but indeed... I see many beautiful things but then I think "its probably nothing" and I'm soo afraid to label to wrong things or miss them, lol ;P I simply have to learn so much... but I'll try my best as much as I can.

    I want to know what the scientists think the red disks are. What are the bright centers? I saw one with two bright centers and one with the bright spot beside it.

    yea, I've seen some of those also... and I hesitated a couple of times but eventually didn't draw a box around them.
    But indeed, a little more feedback would be nice, just to actually know what all the stuff out there actually is! (tough I understand the scientists are busy!) The reason I've joined is that I somehow want to help science a little, even if its a little, and I want to learn more about astronomy... I've already learned tons, but yea, always room for improvement!

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  • curti_m by curti_m

    avoiding chat does not equal lack of support. I'm busy elsewhere. My question; AMW0001183 has a dust cloud covering the left 1/3 of the picture, heavily scalloped. Marking bubbles would involve a dozen or more overlapping with very short arcs. Stars outside the cloud are pushing it away, lots of stars. How does the science tram (yah, I read that...) want this kind of stuff marked?
    I'm going through the 'mark it, or not' phase. I kept thinking I saw galaxies but didn't mark them for modesty's sake. This AM I went to my copy of the DeepField and gave it a good gander. All types, all distances. I've been marking quite a few of them. Could be wrong...!

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  • Ken_Koester by Ken_Koester

    I'd mark the bubbles myself & call it an #MMGTO (my mouse got tired object (-: ).

    I'm skeptical of the planetary nebula idea, myself. They're fairly rare & they are associated with the death of relatively low-mass stars. As potential star-forming areas, what we see hasn't been around nearly long enough for that to happen. Plus, they are usually asymmetric, which these never are. They look more like halos around formed stars to me, either dust/gas that hasn't gotten cleared out as yet, or intervening matter illuminated by the star behind it. The spikeys all look like len-flare type artifacts. If this were visible light images, I would call that a certainty; just don't know enough about how infrared looks to make that call.

    Snarkhunter

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  • sdewitt by sdewitt

    I tend to agree. There seem to be two problems; one is the lack of response from the science team and the other is the way comments are organized by image, making it difficult to identify common objects (you small bubble may be my green knot). Now I do have an astrophysics background (but am NOT part of the team) and I do try to look at recent posts and try to make educated guesses (for instance GRBs and black holes will almost certainly not be found on these images), but I would rather the science team could address some issues. Like today i found what looks like a fairly massive star, judging by the brigtness, still embedded in the proto nebula. But I have no idea how to flag this up other than via keywords.

    Snarkhunter - you are doing an excellent job keeping the forums ticking over

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  • Ken_Koester by Ken_Koester

    I'm retiring at the end of this month to study astronomy full time--and star formation is what I want to tackle. so I have a special interest in this project. A junior level observing class is on my schedule for the fall, but I don't remember if it is only visible light or includes infrared as well.

    I do have the strangest feeling I will be visiting these images again, though (-:

    Early star formation gets studied via infrared & sub-millimeter radio. If I understand the early comments aright, the red in these images corresponds to 24 microns & the green to 3 or 4 (forget exactly which). Wien's Law tells me that is about 120K & something like 800K. Have no idea what the yellowballs correspond to (-: Yeah, I'd love to have a few more comments from the science team about this and other things, but the blogs suggest they are busy prepping phase 2 of this project, so I don't let it worry me. Besides, it's good practice to try to dope things out for myself. I wanted to find HH objects, for example, but didn't know what the image scale was. When we got to the pillars of creation image, I was able to compare it to the classic Hubble take. There ARE HH objects in the pillar, but in these images the jets only extend for maybe 2 pixels at best--and you have to work awful hard to convince yourself they are real. So if that is typical, we just aren't going to see much jet action, at least in that realm. . . .

    But the images are quite stunning at times (-:

    Snarkhunter

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  • sdewitt by sdewitt

    My suspicion bout the yellowballs are young hot starts still shrouded in dust. Mass range will be > one solar mass but would not want to guess upperbound

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