Course Project Astronomy – The Milky Way Project
Final Project
Rasmussen College
Chantalle Witte
November 5, 2014

I chose to research and observe the Milky Way Project through Zooniverse. The primary goal for this research was to locate and classify space bubbles. These space bubbles are essentially assumed to be the formation of stars (The Milky Way Project. Retrieved from http://www.milkywayproject.org). However, space bubbles are considered to be a great unknown, because we simply are not positive what they are, or if they are actually some kind of unexplored substance. Could they be super charged particles of gas? No one knows, which is why we are encouraged to study them and their respective patterns.
I also explored and classified various star clusters, egos, galaxies and other unknown objects. Star clusters are groups of stars. So when a person searches for them, they are essentially searching for a bright area in space, what almost resembles a single brightly illuminated star. An ego is a star that appears to be green in color. There are no stars that emanate a green color; the green is based on the way our eyes perceive the various light refractions. It could be possible that the egos, seen as green are actually red and are the dying low temperature stars. They could also potentially be the blue, extremely hot stars. These are things I would like to explore further. A galaxy is a space system that consists of stars, gas, dust, rock particles, and dark matter. In the Milky Way Project, the galaxies sometimes appear to resemble a star with space matter around it. They appear to look like what an untrained eye would say what they think a fuzzy or foggy Saturn or Jupiter would look like from afar. Something that was not mentioned in the tutorial for the project, was the possibly sightings of red objects/stars. These are known as red giants. They are stars in their dying state and have a lower temperature than the large white (not dwarf white) or blue stars. I also found a few blue specks, which I learned are the stars with the hottest temperature. I also noticed a few close binary systems. These are two stars orbiting each other (Schneider, N., Donahue, M., Bennett, J., & Voit, M. (2013)).
The purpose of this assignment was to detect the early formation of space bubbles, stars and star clusters, and other similar objects. These studies are significant because any and all new and/or previously unseen information can potentially open the doors to understanding the unknowns of our universe. How incredible would it be to be able watch, first hand, the creation of stars. This information could potentially assist in learning about our own creation as well as the creation and demise of other life forms on our other currently uninhabited planets.
I found module five in my current Astronomy course to be the most helpful with teaching me how to distinguish the difference between stars, star clusters, egos, galaxies, and unknowns. In the module I learned that stars begin to form from a cloud of dust, glass, and gravity. This helped me to understand the content within the project