Lit Review

Articles:

The Milky Way Project First Data Release: a bubblier Galactic disc

by R.J. Simpson

The Milky Way Project: What are Yellowballs?

by R.J. Simpson

Summary:

Summary of the First Article:

This article was about the usage of citizen scientists to help identify “bubbles” in the Milky Way. The “bubbles” are excited gas emissions. Scientists have previously surveyed the Milky Way for these bubbles, yet there was so much data, and the criteria for identifying them was inconsistent. Three advances were made to enhance the bubble selection process: The enlistment of citizen scientists to examine images, the incorporation of easier-to-examine data, and relaxing the criteria for what defines a bubble. The main advancement, the use of volunteers, allowed for much more examination than what a few experts could have done. This is because humans can easily identify unusual objects that a computer can’t, and the human brain is very efficient at recognizing patterns. To identify bubbles, the data reduction process split the data analyzed by the citizen scientists into 2 degrees X 2 degree boxes and examines the amount of bubbles in each box. If there were five or more bubbles in a box, then the process further analyzes it. And because the volunteers have a varying degree of precision with drawing bubbles, they are given scores based on their abilities, which in turn weigh their observations accordingly when all the data is averaged together. That way, the analysis of someone with a higher degree of precision will be more important than someone who isn’t as proficient at drawing bubbles, allowing for more accurate data overall. The final product, as a result, contains 5106 identified bubbles, and gave scientists a better idea of how prevalent, and important, triggered star formation is.

The summary of the summary of the First Article:

The data I read, about the first data release of the Milky Way Project, talked about a new catalogue of 5106 IR created using visual classification via the MWP website. The bubbles in the new catalogue was measured by multiple people producing average parameters for their position, radius, thickness, eccentricity and position angle thus had citizen scientist rediscover 86% of the location of the CP06 and CWP07 bubble catalogue. What was also talked about were heat maps of star formation active in galactic plane that provided a crowd resource of bubble and arcs in the Milky Way.

The Summary of the Second Article:

This Paper is generally revolves around the question “What are Yellowballs?” What the writer of this paper is trying to get at is what makes a yellowball what it is, or what is its origin of their appearance. They also are trying to improve their understanding on how mass-star-forming regions change their structure. At the end of it all they presented a large mix of star-forming regions with some being ultra-compact and compact H II. Their were also a few regions for weaker stars. There was actually over 900 yellowballs identified in the Milky Way Project.