Scientists are getting a little help when it comes to exploring the universe. More than 83,000 volunteer citizen scientists have helped to catalog more than 300,000 nearby galaxies.
Named Galaxy Zoo 2, the project is the second phase of a crowdsourcing effort to help categorize the galaxies in our universe.
Crowdsourcing is becoming a new and useful tool for scientists. While computers are good at automatically measuring properties such as the size and color of galaxies, they're unable to tackle more challenging characteristics. For example, computers have a hard time determining the shape and structure of galaxies. That's where citizen scientists come in.
