Twelve Years of Galaxy Zoo

TL;DR

Galaxy Zoo has collected morphological data for over a million galaxies over twelve years, significantly advancing galaxy evolution studies and demonstrating the power of citizen science in large-scale data analysis.

Contribution

This paper reviews twelve years of Galaxy Zoo's contributions to galaxy morphology and evolution, emphasizing citizen science's role and future directions.

Findings

Galaxy Zoo's morphological data has advanced understanding of galaxy evolution.

Citizen science effectively analyzes large astronomical datasets.

Linking galaxy morphology and dynamics yields new insights.

Abstract

The Galaxy Zoo (GZ) project has provided quantitative visual morphologies for over a million galaxies, and has been part of a reinvigoration of interest in the morphologies of galaxies and what they reveal about galaxy evolution. Morphological information collected by GZ has shown itself to be a powerful tool for studying galaxy evolution, and GZ continues to collect classifications - currently serving imaging from DECaLS in its main site, and running a variety of related projects hosted by the Zooniverse; the citizen science platform which came out of the early success of GZ. I highlight some of the results from the last twelve years, with a particular emphasis on linking morphology and dynamics, look forward to future projects in the GZ family, and provide a quick start guide for how you can easily make use of citizen science techniques to analysis your own large and complex data sets.