11 September 2012 Last updated at 07:02

In pictures: Building the 'Galaxy Zoo'

Volunteers on Oxford University's Galaxy Zoo project have been helping scientists classify galaxies as spiral or elliptical. Looking through hundreds of thousands of telescope images, they have also stumbled across odd-looking galaxies which resemble shapes - such as this one, which looks like a penguin.

Letters in the Galaxy Zoo which spell out "Science!"

Some galaxies also resembled letters of the alphabet. For fun, the team have been using the images to spell out words, such as this one - "Science!"

Letters in the Galaxy Zoo which spell out "Radio 4 Today"

Galaxy Zoo's principal investigator, Dr Chris Lintott, said: "Humans are better than computers at pattern recognition tasks like this, and we couldn’t have got so far without everyone’s help." The team spelled out "Radio 4 Today" as a thank-you to the programme's listeners who took part in the project

Letters in the Galaxy Zoo which spell out: "I can see my house from here"

The Galaxy Zoo website now includes more than 250,000 new images of galaxies, most of which have never been seen by humans. By helping to classify them, the University says volunteers have added to our understanding of the processes which shaped our universe.

Letters in the Galaxy Zoo which spell out "abc easy as 123"

More than 250,000 people have taken part in the Galaxy Zoo project since its launch in 2007, sorting through over a million images. Here, they've recreated the famous Jackson 5 lyric "ABC easy as 123".

Science & Environment

In pictures: Building the 'Galaxy Zoo'

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