#galaxyzoo

#Finale of #IAS2017 #Professor Chris Lintott lecture #Galaxyzoo from #penguins to #peas

Today we launch a new project called ‘Shakespeare’s World’. Our mission is to transcribe manuscript_s created by Shakespeare’s contemporaries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. All of these manuscript_s live at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, home of the world’s largest collection of materials relating to Shakespeare and his works. Reading handwriting from Shakespeare’s lifetime is not always easy, but I bet everyone reading this message can pick out a few words or phrases on any given page and develop their ability to read old handwriting over time. The interface allows you to transcribe as little as a word at a time—you don’t have to do a whole page—and you can go at your own pace. Everyone can take part and learn as they go along, and all contributions are welcome. You don’t need to be an expert, and there are plenty of experts and resources on the project to help you. 2016 marks the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, so it’s an opportune time to explore the world in which he lived. The research team is comprised of Zooniverse, the Early Modern Manuscript_s Online (EMMO) project at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) at Oxford University Press. We plan to make transcript_ions available to researchers and anyone who is interested in this fascinating period, and to find new (unrecorded) words and variants for the OED, the most authoritative English dictionary. In anticipation of the holiday season, when many of us are dreaming up holiday meals, fending off colds, and frantically writing letters to friends and family, we’re showcasing two kinds of manuscript_s: recipes (both culinary and medicinal) and letters. Discover how people in the past cooked and kept their families healthy; delve into letters to read the gossip, politics, and news of the day, centuries ago. We look forward to seeing you on Talk, Twitter and our blog. Get involved today at www.shakespearesworld.org Victoria and the Shakespeare’s World team

Two spirals by doctorscience on Flickr.

Hey! Do you want to procrastinate while also being productive? Then go onto http://www.galaxyzoo.org/ and classify galaxies. Your results are used by astronomers and sometimes you get to see really pretty galaxies (tbh most of the time they are not v pretty blobs) 

Picking only 2 was pretty tough; check out the rest of last year's projects over at Science Hack Day Chicago!