Volunteer wanted to help with cosmology research. I and my colleagues are continuing research on the surface brightness of galaxies, which is a key test of the expansion of the universe. But, due to other commitments on their time, we need help with some tasks. We need a computer-savvy volunteer to down load and do some preliminary processing of images of a couple of hundred galaxies from the GALEX NUV catalog. No astronomical experience is required, just computer skills. The volunteer’s work will be acknowledged in any paper that emerges from the research and we’ll share early results with the volunteer.
If interested, please contact Eric Lerner at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
It would be nice to get a sample image for analysis,
then we could to decide upon the analysis algorithm,
agree on output format,
implement multiple detection/analysis programs during the weekend,
and then compare the results, so they would be more reliable.
Sorry, but I could not wait and made a prototype for analysis. I hope this helps to clear up some misunderstanding:
1)What formula to use for brightness calculation. I used RGB average.
2)How to detect galaxies. I do remove of dark space, and take clustered pixels as galaxies
3)What kind of output. Tab separated? What kind of parameters?
4)Need batch processing?
5)Maximum size of images?
6)Memory constrains?
It might be slow, inefficient, and ugly, but should work.
Source included (not commented). http://spreadsheets.google.com/oimg?key=0Aj_in01U5lx5dG92amRCajdWMWd2UXFIc2R4WEtMYlE&oid=1&v=1267763191668
Usage:Extract Debug.zip, and run GalaxyAnalysis.exe
Hey breakable, I’m busy during the week making FF-1 go. Just be patient. We actually have all the algorithms we need. Problem is it just takes time to download the right galaxies. So ,at the moment we don’t need programming. But you will get to look at really far-out images of galaxies.
Focus Fusion Society 
