From this Saturday 15 August, citizen scientists around Australia will help astronomers classify thousands of galaxies which are 800 million to 4 billion light years away. Australian scientists want to understand how galaxies evolve and are asking people across Australia to assist them in this huge project.

By comparing young galaxies to older ones, astronomers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), Western Australia, hope to see how galaxies change over time.

Participants log on to the Galaxy Explorer website where they find instructions and are allocated pictures to classify. It’s suitable for people from 8 years old and there are prizes to win: Two Celestron 90GT wi-fi telescopes. The telescopes can be controlled with an app for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices.

There are more than 300,000 images of galaxies, taken by Australian telescopes, which need to be classified and each image will be studied by 5 people to ensure accuracy. Galaxy Explorer will act as a census for the universe, a stocktake of the galaxy population. Because light from distant galaxies takes a long time to reach Earth, we see what the galaxies looked like long ago – they are snapshots of young galaxies. By comparing new and old galaxies, astronomers work out how they change, evolve and grow. And the human eye is still the best tool for classifying galaxies.

Everyone with regular vision and a computer or tablet with access to the internet can participate. Science Week is officially 15-23 August 2015 but Galaxy Explorer is running for the whole month. The project starts on August 1st and finishes September 4th.

For further information visit the Galaxy Explorer Website.