Uploaded May 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Scientists need your help identifying the shapes of thousands of galaxies in images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)! These classifications will help us answer questions about how the shapes of galaxies have changed over time, and what caused these changes and why. Classify images of galaxies from JWST on Galaxy Zoo: galaxyzoo.org
As we look at more distant objects in the Universe, we see them as they were billions of years ago because light takes time to travel to us. With JWST able to spot galaxies at greater distances than ever before, we’re seeing what galaxies looked like early in the Universe for the first time. The shape of the galaxies we see then tells us about what a galaxy has been through in its lifetime: how it was born, how and when it has formed stars, and how it has interacted with its neighbours.
But with so many galaxies out there in the Universe, there’s more images than us scientists can classify ourselves, so we ask the YOU the public to help out by classifying their shapes online with the Galaxy Zoo project. There are now over 500,000 images of galaxies on the Galaxy Zoo website that need your help to classify their shapes. If you're quick, you may even be the first person to see the galaxies you're asked to classify. You will be asked a few questions about each one, such as ‘Is the galaxy round?’, or ‘Are there signs of spiral arms?’. And you don’t have other worry about being “wrong” because we ask enough people so that we get a spread of answers that are really useful statistically. Plus these classifications are not only useful for the scientific questions we want to answer now, but also as a training set for Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms. Without being taught what to look for by humans, AI algorithms struggle to classify galaxies. But together, humans and AI will be able to to accurately classify limitless numbers of galaxies.
With your help we’ll be able to learn about spectacular galaxy mergers, or how the black holes at the centre of galaxies affect their hosts, and learn how features like spiral arms form and grow.
👩🏽💻 I'm Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford (Christ Church). I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.
drbecky.uk.com
Scientists need your help identifying the shapes of thousands of galaxies in images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)! These classifications will help us answer questions about how the shapes of galaxies have changed over time, and what caused these changes and why. Classify images of galaxies from JWST on Galaxy Zoo: galaxyzoo.org
As we look at more distant objects in the Universe, we see them as they were billions of years ago because light takes time to travel to us. With JWST able to spot galaxies at greater distances than ever before, we’re seeing what galaxies looked like early in the Universe for the first time. The shape of the galaxies we see then tells us about what a galaxy has been through in its lifetime: how it was born, how and when it has formed stars, and how it has interacted with its neighbours.
But with so many galaxies out there in the Universe, there’s more images than us scientists can classify ourselves, so we ask the YOU the public to help out by classifying their shapes online with the Galaxy Zoo project. There are now over 500,000 images of galaxies on the Galaxy Zoo website that need your help to classify their shapes. If you're quick, you may even be the first person to see the galaxies you're asked to classify. You will be asked a few questions about each one, such as ‘Is the galaxy round?’, or ‘Are there signs of spiral arms?’. And you don’t have other worry about being “wrong” because we ask enough people so that we get a spread of answers that are really useful statistically. Plus these classifications are not only useful for the scientific questions we want to answer now, but also as a training set for Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms. Without being taught what to look for by humans, AI algorithms struggle to classify galaxies. But together, humans and AI will be able to to accurately classify limitless numbers of galaxies.
With your help we’ll be able to learn about spectacular galaxy mergers, or how the black holes at the centre of galaxies affect their hosts, and learn how features like spiral arms form and grow.
👩🏽💻 I'm Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford (Christ Church). I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.
drbecky.uk.com
