Launching the Roman Galaxy Zoo

Our universe is filled with galaxies, complex three-dimensional structures of stars, dark matter, gas and dust. Seen in projection they present a bewildering ‘zoo’ of morphologies—flat disks, spiral arms, central bulges and linear bars—that hold clues to how galaxies assembled and changed over time.

The Roman Space Telescope will deliver Hubble Space Telescope sensitivity and resolution across up to 5 percent of the night sky, producing images of tens of millions of galaxies—far too many for inspection by small numbers of astronomers. Citizen science offers a scalable solution and is a core element of NASA’s “Vision for Scientific Excellence.” Galaxy Zoo, the founding project of the Zooniverse, pioneered crowd-sourcing the identification of complex galaxy shapes and has extensive experience turning volunteer classifications into reliable quantitative morphologies.

roman telescope, hubble telescope, galaxies, galaxy zoo, zooniverse, citizen science, galaxy morphology, dark matter, night sky, nasa