Galaxy Zoo Finds the Milky Way’s Twin

A-Level student Tim Buckman from Portsmouth Grammer School Has used Galaxy Zoo to find our own galaxy’s twin (see image below). He spent 6 weeks working with Karen Masters at Portsmouth University this summer through the Nuffield Science Bursery Scheme. You can read his blog post about it on the Galaxy Zoo Blog.

This galaxy is as close to our own as could be found amongst the hundreds of thousands of candidates in Galaxy Zoo. Tim filtered all of the galaxies in the set to only those barred-spirals with the same mass and number of arms as our galaxy, the Milky Way. Only nine galaxies matched all the criteria and this one looked the most like the current view of the Milky Way.

It’s hard not to wonder if there’s anyone looking back and thinking the same thing out there in this distance, island universe.

I had some Nuffield students this Summer too, and will be reporting on their progress as soon as possible. Well done Karen and Tim on a great result.