The Moonometer (TM) Challenge!
Join in the Moonometer (TM) challenge! We need you to classify 25,000 images between now and Monday to celebrate International Observe the Moon Night. Just go to Moon Zoo and start clicking!
2 Million images!!
Moon Zoo isn’t yet I year old but last week the 2 millionth classification was made. This represents an amazing number of craters measured, boulders examined and interesting features marked. To get an idea of the size of the area this represents just look at some of the equivalent measurements:
- 46,336 square miles (that’s 120,010 square km!)
- 2,000 Manhattans
- 2.91 Switzerlands
- 272,748 Vaticans
- 13,187,802 Taj Mahals
- 352,979 Disneylands
So how much of the Moon have we done? Half? A quarter? Not even anywhere near! This represents just 0.3% of the Moon so there’s plenty of Moon left yet. So thanks a million (or two) to everybody and keep on clicking! Don’t forget to check the Moonometer(TM) from time to time to see how we’re doing.
International Observe the Moon Night Challenges
To celebrate the very first International Observe the Moon Night on 18 September 2010 Moon Zoo set 2 challenges. Zookeeper Rob blogged about one challenge which involved the launch of the Moonometer.TM Between September 15th and 19th the Moon Zoo community were challenged to classify 20,000 images, a vast area of the Moon equivalent to 2 Chicagos.
This proved to be easy and we blasted through the target within 48 hours! The stakes were upped to 40,000 images (or 40 Manhattans.) Again the Moon Zooites rose to the challenge and 24 hours later the second target was smashed and a third and final target of 60,000 images was set (that’s equivalent to 10,596 Disneylands!) 24 hours and 60,000 images later the Moon Zoo Community had reason to be proud.
We celebrated International Observe the Moon Night in style – inside, warm and cosy looking at images of the Moon in unprecedented detail while (for some of us, at least) the clouds descended, the winds howled and the rain fell preventing any real time observations.
And the good news is that the MoonometerTM is here to stay!
The second challenge was a photographic one. Not the easiest challenge given the inclement weather in some areas but nevertheless we rose to the challenge and this is the result – a mixture of daytime, night time, arty and abstract Moons:
There’s a couple of mine in there and big thanks go to fellow contributors PaddyD, Tom128, astrostu, Geoff and Caro (of Moon Gallery fame).
Caro based her 2 abstracts on the Ina feature.
We now have a permanent lunar imaging thread on the forum to complement the Moon Gallery.
Thanks everyone! 
Jules is a volunteer moderator for the Moon Zoo Forum.
