Citizen Science Projects

Project Contact: Prof. Yara Jaffé, Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María –Valparaíso, Chile, yara.jaffe@usm.cl

Looking for Strange Galaxies is a citizen-science project designed to identify rare and morphologically peculiar galaxies that could be going though environmental processes. We are particularly interested in systems showing signatures of mergers, tidal interactions, ram-pressure stripping, asymmetric spiral structure, warped disks, shells, rings, and other unusual morphologies.

The project was built by CHANCES (the CHilean Cluster galaxy Evolution Survey), a Chilean-led 4MOST survey targeting more than 500,000 galaxies in and around galaxy clusters. The Zooniverse classifications provide a complementary morphological component to the forthcoming spectroscopic data, enabling us to investigate how galaxy evolution is driven by interactions, gas physics, and environment.

Volunteer classifications are used to build a high-quality catalogue of peculiar and transforming galaxies, which can be used to understand the inflience of large-scale environment on galaxy transformations (see pilot study in Dulcien et al.2026). In addition, the dataset will also provide a valuable training and validation set for future machine-learning applications. Particularly interesting candidates can be prioritized for detailed follow-up with facilities such as MUSE.

How can you get involved?

We welcome contributions at several levels:

• Classify galaxies on Zooniverse and help identify rare and interesting systems.
• Discuss and flag promising candidates through the project forum.
• Translate the project to your language.
• Bring the project to your local community though outreach activitie.
• Scientific collaboration.

Educational resources

For educators, students, and Spanish-speaking participants, we are also developing educational resources in Spanish related to galaxies, galaxy evolution, and citizen science. This is funded by Millenium Nucleus for Galaxies MINGAL grant in Chile. These materials are available through manosalaciencia.cl and can be used to introduce students and the wider public to current astronomical research and opportunities to participate in it.