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Galaxy Zoo: Clump Scout II

Galaxies often contain “clumps”, bright spots where stars are forming fastest. Today’s observatories, like the Euclid space telescope, an ESA (European Space Agency) mission with critical contributions from NASA, are capturing ever-more detailed images of galaxies, with more information about these clumps. Now scientists have built a machine learning model (a kind of artificial intelligence) to identify and mark clumps in images of galaxies like those seen by Euclid to help answer basic questions about them. 
However, the model isn’t doing its job well enough! The scientists need your help spotting the clumps and setting the model straight!
Join Galaxy Zoo: Clump Scout II to see detailed images of galaxies with clumps that have been identified by this machine-in-training, and give feedback to help train the tools that might unlock the secrets of star formation. You’ll be joining a successful collaboration, the team that launched the first Galaxy Zoo: Clump Scout project, which invited volunteers to search the local Universe for galaxies in 2019.  

Go to Project Website about Galaxy Zoo: Clump Scout II

project task

Examine images

division

Astrophysics

where

Online

launched

2026

Three side‑by‑side images of the same galaxy observed by different telescopes. The left image, from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, shows a faint, low‑resolution, fuzzy patch of light with only a hint of spiral structure. The middle image, from the Hubble Space Telescope, reveals the galaxy’s spiral shape more clearly, with a soft glow and several distinct clumps of light. The right image, from the Euclid mission, shows the sharpest detail, with bright blue clumps tracing the spiral arms.
The same clumpy galaxy as seen by the ground-based Sloan Digital Sky Survey (operations began in 2000), the HSC or Hyper Suprime-Cam (2014-2021), and the European Space Agency Euclid mission (launched in 2023). The better resolving power of each telescope reveals more and more detail about the star-forming clumps. (The bright object at the bottom right is a foreground star.)
Left: Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Middle: Hubble Space Telescope. Right: Euclid mission.

What you'll do:

  • Learn how to recognize clumps, the bright spots in galaxies where stars are being formed more quickly than elsewhere.
  • View the work of the machine learning model (a kind of AI), which has placed colored boxes on top of pictures of galaxies.
  • Use the project interface’s tools to move or delete the boxes or draw new ones to correct the machine.
  • If you like, you can discuss what you find with other volunteers and scientists in the Talk forum.

Requirements

  • Time: 10-15 minutes to complete the tutorial, then as much time as you like.
  • Equipment: An internet-connected computer, tablet, or smartphone
  • Knowledge: None. The in-project tutorial provides all the necessary information.

Get started! 

  1. Visit the project website.   
  2. Navigate to the “Correct a clump” workflow and complete the in-project tutorial to learn how to recognize clumps.
  3. Start correcting machine-made marks of clumps in galaxy images made by the Euclid space telescope.

Learn more:

The Galaxy Zoo: Clump Scout II project’s Research page gives an overview of the tools (space telescopes and machine learning) that power this project, the state of science of clumpy galaxies, and a summary of the unanswered questions about the formation and function of clumps (the Results page also shares information on clump formation and their galactic environments). The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page has additional, practical information relevant to doing the work of the project.   The original Clump Scout project is complete, but can still be viewed here.

Galaxy Zoo: Clump Scout II logo. On a black background, the slashed O Zooniverse logo is colored in by a false-color image of a clumpy galaxy as observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. A Roman numeral II sits in the lower foreground.
Images of a spiral galaxy with a bright central region and a swirl of discontinuous spiral arms of different brightnesses. Small green boxes have been placed on the image by an AI model to outline bright spots along the spiral arms, which are the “clumps” that are the focus of this research. Yellow boxes mark stars and blue boxes marking background galaxies.
Image of a clumpy galaxy from the Euclid mission with colored boxes where a computer thinks there are clumps or other objects in the image like stars or background galaxies. At Galax Zoo: Clump Scout II you’ll move these boxes around to train the computer model.
Image data: Euclid (ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA - CC BY 3.0 IGO). Image compilation by Lucy Fortson.

Get to know the people of Impact Flash!

Hugh Dickinson

Astronomy Lecturer, Open University

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Lucy Fortson

Project lead, Professor and Astrophysicist, University of Minnesota

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Jürgen Popp

Post-graduate student, Open University

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Hayley Roberts

Postdoctoral Astrophysics Researcher, University of Minnesota

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Vihang Mehta

Staff Scientist, California Institute of Technology and IPAC

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Claudia Scarlata

Professor and Astrophysicist, Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics

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Kameswara Bharadwaj Mantha 

Researcher, University of Missouri

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Vivasvaan Aditya Raj

Astrophysics Doctoral student, University of Minnesota

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Dominic Adams

Astronomy Doctoral student (now graduated), University of Minnesota

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Karen Masters

Galaxy Zoo Principal Investigator, Astronomer, Haverford College

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