{"id":444385,"date":"2026-06-02T23:19:54","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T13:19:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/get-involved\/citizen-science\/help-galaxy-zoo-clump-scout-ii-project\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T23:19:54","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T13:19:54","slug":"be-a-clump-scout-and-help-reveal-secrets-of-stellar-nurseries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=444385","title":{"rendered":"Be a Clump Scout and Help Reveal Secrets of Stellar Nurseries"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the mid-20th century, astronomers discovered strange \u201cclumpy\u201d galaxies filled with mysterious bright blobs \u2013 massive stellar nurseries where stars are born at an explosive rate. Curiously, these clumpy galaxies were much more common in the early universe than they are today. We still don\u2019t know why they vanished.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Euclid space telescope, an ESA (European Space Agency) mission with critical contributions from NASA, has begun to capture images of millions of galaxies. These images \u2013 far more than any team of professional scientists could ever catalog alone \u2013 include high-definition views of clumpy galaxies that promise to reveal structure within and among the clumps. Astronomers hope to use these images to obtain new information about which galaxies host clumps, where the clumps are, how and why they evolved, and more \u2013 but they need your help!<\/p>\n

To tackle this mountain of data, scientists are creating a \u201cdigital assistant\u201d in the form of machine learning, a kind of artificial intelligence. The machine algorithm has been partially trained with results from an earlier project called \u201cGalaxy Zoo: Clump Scout.\u201d Now, as a volunteer for the new Galaxy Zoo: Clump Scout II<\/a> project, you\u2019ll improve and train this tool further. You\u2019ll examine images of galaxies that the machine has labelled with squares where it thinks it sees a real clump. The machine often gets confused by distant stars or camera glitches. So you\u2019ll gently move those squares around, delete them, or add new ones, to help the algorithm learn.<\/p>\n

As a part of Galaxy Zoo: Clump Scout II, you will help investigate how giant star-forming nurseries formed, solve the mystery of their disappearance over cosmic time, and reveal more about how star formation really works in galaxies. All you need is a laptop or smartphone. Click here<\/a> to learn more!<\/p>\n

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A clumpy galaxy seen by telescopes with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (left), the Hyper Suprime-Cam (middle) and the Euclid mission (right). You can see how the better resolving power of each subsequent telescope helps us see more and more detail about the star-forming clumps. (The bright object at the bottom right is a foreground star.)<\/div>\n
Image data: SDSS (left; Sloan Digital Sky Survey \u2013 CC BY 4.0); HSC (center; NAOJ\/HSC Project \u2013 CC BY 4.0); Euclid (right; ESA\/Euclid\/Euclid Consortium\/NASA \u2013 CC BY 3.0 IGO). Image post-processing and compilation by Hugh Dickinson and J\u00fcrgen Popp.<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n