So you’re addicted to Galaxy Zoo, and while identifying galaxies hither and yon you found some killer cool galaxy image. Did you discover something new? Could this be the scientific breakthrough of all time?
Probably not. But it’s still wicked nifty, and you want to find out more. What to do?
Actually, it’s not too hard. What you need to find out is the name of the galaxy — really, the catalog number. If the galaxy is bright/big enough, it’ll be in some catalog like the New General Catalog or the Uppsala Galaxy Catalog.
The easiest way to find it is to use an astronomical database. Pretty much every object in the sky to a relatively faint limit is in a catalog somewhere, and a lot of these are online and searchable. The best bet is to use the coordinates of the object you found.
Astronomers use coordinates on the sky like longitude and latitude, but we call them Right Ascension and Declination. The Sloan survey used by Galaxy Zoo lists the coordinates in degrees; RA goes from 0 to 360, and Dec goes from -90 to 90 (just like Earth coords do). You can use these coordinates to find the galaxy, just like you can use long and lat to find, say, an island on Earth.
Let’s look at an example.
You’re tooling around Galaxy Zoo, and you spot this astonishing tableau. Wow! A collision between three galaxies, with the large one showing a very long tidal tail (extending well past the two smaller galaxies in the center).
If you are in Galaxy Zoo at the time, click the galaxy image to get a bigger version. Now look at the URL (or hover your mouse over the image and check out the address in the bottom of your browser). The last bit will have the RA and Dec! In this case, the coordinates part of the URL is
ra=213.44051502&dec=8.21870234
So the RA is 213.44051502 and the Dec is 8.21870234. The best place to go trolling for what this means is the French SIMBAD database. Once there, on the left is a link to search by coordinates (or you can go directly there). Cut and paste the coordinates into the text field — but make sure you leave a space between them, and make sure you put a "plus" or "minus" sign in front of the Dec (if there is no sign in the URL, then put a "+" there). Hit enter!
You may get a single hit, or there may be lots. Chances are there are only one or two. In the case of our interacting trio above, there are five separate names, but I suspect they all mean the same object (there are multiple catalog names for every object in the sky). I see a UGC number in this case, which is good; that’s a popular catalog. I dump the name UGC 9103 into Google, and the first hit returned is to SkyFactory! Win! That is a fantastic resource for images of the sky. The image isn’t as nice as the one from Sloan, but still, there you go. You can track the other catalogs as well and see if your galaxy turns up.
If you happen to get an NGC number, try the Interactive NGC database, too.
All in all, tracking down an interesting object isn’t that hard. And if it doesn’t show up anywhere, well, you might be onto something! Contact the Galaxy Zoo folks. But hold off on the Nobel Prize nomination committee just yet.
July 23rd, 2007 at 3:21 pm
Cool! I discovered something nifty a while ago and bookmarked the address. I’ll check on it.
July 23rd, 2007 at 4:37 pm
I’ve found a couple ring galaxies just today, as well as this beauty here http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v459/RaptorJedi/galaxy%20zoo/spiral2.jpg?t=1185230096
July 23rd, 2007 at 5:17 pm
There is a direct link from every object’s page to the NASA Extragalactic Database (NED), which is a repository of information about all published objects. I find it much easier to use than SIMBAD, and generally quite a bit faster. Also, it allows easy access to plenty of other catalogs.
Using your example, Phil; from the Finding Chart Tool, click the “Expl” link in the upper left (just below the SDSS logo). That will bring up the object explorer for whatever is centered in the frame. In the left sidebar, there are links to NED, SIMBAD and the NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS), which will bring you directly to papers about the object.
Incidentally, it looks like your chosen galaxies are in both GALEX and 2MASS. Unfortunately, GALEX doesn’t have as good as an image browser as SDSS: they need a bigger budget!
Also, I prefer the Navigate browser myself: click the “Navi” link on the left (it’s next to the “Expl” link under the logo). You can then wander around with the arrows and click on individual objects to explore them more easily.
Ah, the joys of working with the SDSS data every day…
July 23rd, 2007 at 5:29 pm
RaptorJedi: what’s the location of that one? That’s quite a pretty trainwreck.
July 23rd, 2007 at 8:01 pm
SIMBAD doesn’t seem to be working for me. So I’ll just brag about the “pretty trainwreck” I saw here.
LINK
July 23rd, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Phil, when I am in GalaxyZoo I get nothing when I click on the galaxy image. Neither right nor left clicks get either larger images or coordinates. Where are you really when you get this information? Please, try to be accurate so I can find what you are talking about.
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:58 pm
I have to wonder what young earth creationists think when they see a picture like this. (My guess is that they don’t think too much about it.) Specifically, the light from these galaxies left their stars billions of years ago. Ok, so the creationists believe that the light was created in-transit or was moving super-duper fast in order for us to see it – a mere 6,000 years after the creation of the universe. But, the galaxies appear to be post-collision. Based on the massive sizes of a galaxies (eg. the Milky Way is 100,000 light years across), this collision would’ve occurred over a very long time (millions or tens of millions of years?) But, if the universe is only 6,000 years old, then this the collision never actually occurred – instead, these galaxies were just created in an apparent post-collision state. (Shakes head)
July 24th, 2007 at 3:29 am
Nice deduction, tinyfrog! I am honestly almost always speechless when confronted with the argument that light speed used to be “faster” (what is is this, Futurama?) This sort of evidence, that of the collision of TITANIC objects whose movement we know for sure is not super-fast, and would require a biblical miracle to achieve, blows their argument right out of the water and betrays their position for being non-science if they fall back on the miracle argument.
July 24th, 2007 at 4:59 am
Hi Guys,
I found a really cool merger string:
http://cas.sdss.org/astro/en/tools/chart/chart.asp?ra=198.87245017&dec=62.13489119
After only 10mins of searching.
Cheers,
Les Dalrymple
Contributing Editor
Sky & Tel
July 24th, 2007 at 9:01 am
What If You Find Something Totally Cool?…
A great big peek above our garters to Dr. Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer for his helpful post about the Galaxy Zoo website. (Plus I’ve been dying to use this image and it’s perfect for this!)
So you’re addicted to Galaxy Zoo, and while …
July 24th, 2007 at 9:06 am
What If You Find Something Totally Cool?…
(Post by Kate, crossposted from Kissing Corporal Kate)
A great big peek above our garters to Dr. Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer for his helpful post about the Galaxy Zoo website. (Plus I’ve been dying to use this image and it’s perfect for…
July 24th, 2007 at 11:05 am
Umm, say its not a death star, please?
http://cas.sdss.org/astro/en/tools/chart/chart.asp?ra=233.85960009&dec=1.33886041
Galaxy Ref: 587729747376406779
July 24th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Remember folks, if you find something, let GZ know!
July 25th, 2007 at 12:54 am
I did find something totally cool and here’s the link: LINK
What is it? I can’t reach SIMBAD. The site’s probably getting pounded by all of us GalaxyZoo addicts.
It looks like a triangular sheet of newbie stars. I sure hope it’s not an optical artifact. If it’s something new and different, I’m naming it Michaelaneum.
Dang! It has a parentID. It’s an artifact of the deblending process, isn’t it… (deep sigh)
July 25th, 2007 at 11:53 am
This delightful merger of an elliptic stretching out a spiral is cataloged at Skyfactory, but this new image is much, much better
http://cas.sdss.org/astro/en/tools/explore/obj.asp?id=587735695916400754
(click on the picture to see the whole thing)
http://www.skyfactory.org/deepskycatalogue/UGC9511.html
July 26th, 2007 at 8:20 am
587725550139277406 is a nice blue ring starburst galaxy
587728931868180557 is another ring-like galaxy
587731185669177359 is yet another ring-like galaxy
587742014906630292 is a polar ring galaxy
All are SDSS objects
July 26th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
Can anyone tell me what this thing is. It looks like a long (1000000 ly)
pipe of (?).
http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s259/syncronation/getjpegCAD7K4BQ.jpg
August 1st, 2007 at 1:42 am
[...] forming a line between them and to the upper right and upper left. This is one of the images recently found on Galaxy Zoo. (Link to image) The thing that struck me about this image is the enormousness of the [...]
August 16th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
Syncronation, this is a “spike” of a bright star outside of view. Nothing unusual on astronomical pictures…
Sissy123
September 9th, 2007 at 9:51 am
could you tell me the youngest to the oldest type galaxy.s?
July 8th, 2008 at 11:20 am
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