Galaxy Zoo

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey with its 120 megapixel camera is able to gather a lot of information about the visible universe. With so many newly observed galaxies to classify, it would take a team of astronomers way too long to categorize every one.

This is where Galaxy Zoo comes in.

It is much more difficult for a computer to identify shapes and patterns in objects, than for a human. So, to pick out all the eccentricities of the million or so galaxies yet to be categorized, the folks behind Galaxy Zoo thought it'd be best to crowdsource the task to tens of thousands of competent amateur astronomers. Much of the appeal behind the project is that users are given access to massive amounts of never before seen images, and are allowed to take part in defining our expanding knowledge of the Universe.