I’m giving a public talk about Galaxy Zoo and citizen science tomorrow (Monday) night. If you happen to be in or near Southern Illinois then you can find details here.  Otherwise you can watch online either below or, if that doesn’t work, here. It kicks of at 7pm Central time, which is 1am BST or 12pm GMT. Streaming Video by Ustream.TV

Just a reminder (in the absence of the forum) that there’s a Galaxy Zoo meet-up in London this Tuesday. It’ll follow a lecture I’m giving as part of the Royal Astronomical Society’s Lunchtime Lecture Series at their apartments in Burlington House, Picadilly (look for the Royal Academy of Arts). The lecture begins at 1, although you might want to turn up a bit earlier to make sure you get a seat, and we’ll gather in the courtyard outside the RAS at 2 and then go and find somewhere for a late lunch. Hope to see you all tomorrow. Chris

10 JUNE: RAS LUNCHTIME LECTURE: HUBBLE, BUBBLE, TOIL AND TROUBLE: A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE MOST FAMOUS TELESCOPE EVER MADE: BURLINGTON HOUSE, LONDON

Dr Chris Lintott, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, STFC Science and Society Fellow and co-presenter of the BBC ‘Sky at Night’ will tell the story of the NASA / ESA Hubble Space Telescope (HST), in orbit since 1990. This autumn, astronauts aboard the space shuttle Atlantis will carry out one of the most difficult repairs in history, with the aim of restoring the HST to full working order. Dr Lintott’s lecture will tell the HST story, and look forward to the discoveries still to be made.

The lunchtime lectures are open to everyone and take place in the newly-refurbished Burlington House, the headquarters of the RAS off Piccadilly in central London. The lectures take place at 1pm on the first Tuesday of each month from September to June and the audience can take their seats from 12.45.

Chris and I are at the AAS meeting in St. Louis. Chris has been keeping up with the meeting on his blog, and we’ve both given talks about Galaxy Zoo. Everyone here is really excited about what we’ve been able to do with Galaxy Zoo - great job, everyone!

Last night, Chris and I held a Galaxy Zoo planning meeting while watching a St. Louis Cardinals baseball game. Here is a beautiful photo of where we were - Busch Stadium in St. Louis (click for a larger version):

Photo from Flicker user pdsphil

Here is a beautiful photo of Busch Stadium 3.2 times over:

Why is that significant?

We suddenly realized, looking up at the stadium, that this is how large Galaxy Zoo is.

The stadium holds about 45,000 people. At last count, Galaxy Zoo had 141,960 volunteers. Here are some other things that we are bigger than:

• The entire nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines
• Chris’s hometown, twice over
• The entire student population of the Universities of Michigan, Illinois, and Texas, combined
• The Italian Army
• …and 30 American Astronomical Societies.

More suggestions?

As you can see, we woke up this morning, to find that the Space Telescope Science Institute – the organisation running the world’s most famous telescope, Hubble — have sent out their approval and denial letters for the next cycle of observations with the Telescope. Our proposal for observing the Voorwerp (led by Principal Investigator Bill Keel) was approved for 7 orbits. Getting time on HST is hard at the best of times, and this time round was particularly difficult. Hubble is currently waiting for a visit from astronauts to carry out a desperately needed set of repairs and upgrades, and every astronomer in the world wanted to be first in the queue once it’s back on top form. To give you an idea, more than 20,000 orbits were requested when there were only 3,500 of them to go round - and 7 of them now belong to Galaxy Zoo.

So when will you see a gorgeous Hubble image of the Voorwerp? Not for a while yet. First, the Space Shuttle has to successfully complete its final service mission to repair the Hubble and install new instruments. This is currently scheduled for October 8, 2008. After all the repairs are done and the spacecraft has been checked out thoroughly, we then have to wait for the Voorwerp to actually be visible on the sky for Hubble. All this will take at least several months more. And of course once the data is taken, we then have to reduce it first to produce a picture. Still, it will be a wonderful opportunity for us to learn more about what the Voorwerp is.

By coincidence, today’s the birthday of the Voorwerp’s discover. Happy birthday, Hanny - and enjoy your present from the Space Telescope Science Institute.

If you’ve arrived via the Galaxy Zoo newsletter, you’re probably wondering where the posts about our observing trip are. They’re here:  

Bill started things off by writing about our quarry for this Zoo-inspired hunt.

I then got excited about where we were, and about our first images. And about the telescope.

Later in the run we were seeing more and more perfect pairs, all of which will help us track down the galaxies’ dust.

Despite a few problems we pressed on, and started to produce colour images for the first time.

Since we got back, work has continued - and I’ll leave it to Bill to give you the latest.