A few months ago, Karen Masters asked on the Galaxy Zoo forum whether Galaxy Zoo has inspired us to do anything new. As she said, there are a few great stories of volunteers actually going back to school, taking science courses, one of whom is my friend Thomas. But she was also after maybe not so drastic changes: “I honestly mean anything. Have you read books, or watched TV shows you wouldn’t have otherwise known about. Maybe gone to a museum, or joined your local amateur astronomy club. Just curious about the wider effect of Galaxy Zoo on the lives of the volunteers.”
I loved this topic right away, as I was just as curious about how – as I once called it – this oil spill of knowledge and fun had affected the lives of fellow zooites. Another friend, Jules, wrote: “I didn’t do science at school (girl’s weren’t encouraged) and regretted it. Got a non-science degree and a non-science related career and I settled for astronomy as a hobby and thought that was that. Then came Galaxy Zoo (and to be fair Stardust@Home too) and I found that there was a way in to science after all these years. Several Open Uni courses later I am now studying for my second science qualification.”
But the success of the now called Zooniverse didn’t just change our lives. One of the professionals, an astronomer who joined the team via the forum (to cut that story very short) and is now doing the lead on our Hubble investigation of the Voorwerp, Bill Keel, said: “You mean in some way other than blogging, doing podcasts, working on the comic book, furnishing grist for my most successful Hubble proposal in about 5 years, an additional research grant, starting points for three additional student projects so far, four observing trips, months when I had at least an hour a day of joy looking at what new odd galaxies people have posted, and heading to Greenwich to meet a large crowd consisting of 0.03% of Zooites and having the new experience of people actually lined up to buy me a drink? Other than those, I have trouble thinking of ways…”
Kevin Schawinski, Zookeeper from the start, added that he had the occasional extra espresso, but joking aside, I’m pretty sure it all had a big impact on his and Chris Lintott’s life as well, as initiator of the project. In fact, I remember Chris saying things like ‘I never thought I’d be doing this, but thanks to the Voorwerp…’ a couple of times. And the Voorwerp obviously did change my life as well. As I said in the thread on the forum, I’ve written the page in the comic book about ‘how finding the Voorwerp changed my life’, but if you’re restricted to so many words, you only mention the highlights and there’s lots of nice little things I wouldn’t have known about if it wasn’t for the Zoo. We agreed my list would probably be very long though.
But I did also wanted to answer this myself, as it would be nice to look back and realise what cool things I got to experience if I hadn’t found out about Galaxy Zoo. So I’ll have a think and this will probably be continued soon.
3 Comments
Being involved in any of the Zooniverse projects is not just a worthwhile way to contribute a few labor hours; I think for many of us ‘could-have-beens’ it does represent a special & unique opportunity to work in fields we love but were unable or willing to pursue professionally. Very excited to see what discoveries (and new astronomers!) these crowd sourcing projects produce in the near future!
I agree. Thanks for that, Daryll.
Great write-up, Hanny