Homework and Essays

TLDR: Any random person can help NASA with no training, links are at the bottom.

When I was a child, I would often wonder if I’d become an astronomer. I have a vivid memory of sneaking out of bed in the wee hours of the morning and putting on my glasses, just to watch the stars above my house. Space is, and always will be, an essential part of my sense of self, and there was a part of me that longed to work with my fellow space enthusiasts, pushing our understanding of the universe to its limit.

Of course, it doesn't always work like that. I am fairly good at understanding the concepts and math surrounding astronomy, but it often bores me. While I love learning about the celestial bodies discovered day after day, I don’t really have any interest in knowing the specifics. Occasionally, I’ll do my own research into the reasons why things work the way they do, but otherwise, I was content simply learning that they existed. It was a little disappointing, knowing that I wouldn't genuinely enjoy pouring over images and data of newly discovered galaxies or nebulas. I had accepted this, however.

Then, in a history class I took this past semester, I learned of something called crowdsourcing. It was explained to me and my class that, sometimes, institutions will reach out to the general public, asking for help with tedious tasks. These crowdsourcing projects were usually asking for help transcribing old documents and the like. While scrolling through a website called Zooniverse, I discovered a page asking for help labeling images and words in scans of old astronomy textbooks. I had been investigating the page - mostly trying to decide if there was enough of a historical aspect for my assignment - when I saw that the people in charge of the project were partnered with NASA. 

I decided to poke around NASA’s website, wondering if maybe they had more projects. Lo and behold, under a page labeled “Citizen Science,” were dozens of links leading to various projects, covering everything from reporting mosquitos on earth to scouring images for asteroids. I clicked on a few different links, finally settling on a page asking for help labeling images of Jupiter. They were looking for vortexes in Jupiter's atmosphere.

I had partially expected there to be some sort of requirement in order to help. A degree in astrophysics, or meteorology, or anything at all. As it turns out, there was nothing I needed to do but press a button labeled “Circle the Vortex!” under the heading of the webpage. Sure enough, a tutorial popped up explaining how to use the tools given.

It was surprisingly simple. If the image had a red, brown, or white vortex, then I was to circle it with the matching color. If the vortex had a few different colors in it, then I was to select the “Multi Color” tool, specifying what color was in the center, and what color was on the border. I breezed through quite a few images, pausing only to consider if certain vortexes were actually red, or just a rusty brown. There was one image I remember well, it had quite a few itty bitty vortexes dotting along the stripes of clouds. A couple of times, I came across an image that looked entirely barren of vortexes. It usually only took me a few moments to realize that yes, there was a vortex in there, It was just hard to see. This was mostly due to the image being poor quality, but a few times the vortex just happened to be the exact same color as the clouds around it, blending in. Somehow, there wasn’t a single image without something to circle.

Despite my general hatred for tedious tasks, I found this to be fun. The repetitive nature of circling vortexes, combined with the uniqueness of each image, created a relaxing activity that took up about an hour of my time. Each image only took a minute or two to complete. It was certainly more fun than the crowdsourcing project I was doing for my history class, which turned out to be complicated and difficult to understand.

After toiling away at the project for a little while, I switched gears, looking into other projects. Admittedly, I didn't really do much for a few weeks, being busy with schoolwork. While surfing the Zooniverse Space page, I spotted a link labeled “Fishing for Jellyfish Galaxies.” Amused, I clicked the link. I hadn’t ever heard of something called a “Jellyfish Galaxy”, although I can’t say I was surprised to learn that, yes, they do exist. Apparently, a Jellyfish Galaxy is more of a description than an actual type; any galaxy moving too fast through the universe will leave many trails of stars and space dust, looking similar to a jellyfish. (Slightly off topic: did you know that jellyfish born in space get vertigo when brought back to Earth? Now you do.)

The task seemed easy enough: Look at a picture, find the trails of stars following a galaxy, label accordingly. It was a little more complicated than that. Firstly, not all of the galaxies were going to be jellyfish galaxies, forcing me to study the image more closely so as to not miss anything. Secondly, like most pictures of galaxies, the image quality… left something to be desired. It’s not like I could really complain, however. There wasn’t really much anyone could do about how the images looked, due to the galaxies being entirely too far away. Lastly, there were false-positives. 

If two galaxies were too close together, then any evidence of potential ram-pressure stripping (the galaxies going too fast for their own good), could simply be gravitational pull. This wouldn't be too much of an issue if I knew what “too close” meant. I continued with the assumption that it meant they were close to touching in the image, but the fact that I wasn't 100% sure made me uneasy. There was a section on the first image asking for any comments, so I wrote “I’ll be honest, I don't know if the galaxy at the top is too close to the one in the middle or not. I'm going to assume not, as the scale of the image is probably immense” in order to let them know that the image might not have been what I labeled it as.

Other than a few other confusing images - which I commented on, making sure that they knew they needed to be looked at again by another set of eyes - the task was simple. The majority of galaxies weren’t jellyfish-esq, so I got excited every time something looked unusual, like this one

If you look closely, you can see that one of the arms on the left side of this galaxy is beginning to fall behind. I believe the speckle of pixels following this arm are a little more blended with the background because it is a trail.

It was satisfying, knowing that the work I was doing was making someone's job much easier. Rather than someone who didn't like sorting through images slogging away at it, I was happily toiling away at the task. For a moment, I wondered if I’d prefer to do this for a living, but then I remembered that this isn't really a job per se, so the moment passed.

There's a sense that many different sciences are up upon an ivory tower, inaccessible to those without the privileges and resources to learn the material necessary. This, however, shows that most scientists are thrilled with the idea of including the public with the work they are doing, trying their best to teach to an audience that wants to listen. I feel as though crowdsourcing isn't something that many people know of; I had no idea it was something I could do until this year, and I’ve been fairly involved in my many interests (admittedly, I can be a bit obvious, so I may be making too grand an assumption). So, I wanted to let people know. If you’ve read this far, Congrats!

The Science I did regarding Jupiter

The Science I did regarding Galactic Jellyfish

Zooniverse

NASA's Citizen Science Projects