Write your name in the stars….

GET online and you, too, could have a chunk of space named after you.

This months news that a Dutch schoolteacher had a distant gas cloud named after her has re-ignited interest in the Galaxy Zoo website. She spotted the usual bright object in the sky whilst using the site last year and reported it.Experts did not know of it, found it fascinating and it is now known as Hanny’s Voorwerp.

Since this site’s inception, 150,00 worldwide users have helped astronomers by pooring over pictures of far reaches of the universe. So, what is it all about?

In a nutshell, professional star gazers cannot keep up with the stream of photographs that their telescopic cameras are taking of remote galaxies. Yet computers cannot do the job of examining the pictures either. So, they have roped in web users to help.

The galaxy zoo site presents you with a photo that may be the first to see and it asks you what the galaxy looks like. Thus, you classify it and flag up any-thing unusual or interesting. This leaves the boffins to concentrate on the more technically demanding work.

Like everything to do with space, big numbers are involved, So, far amateur enthusiasts have made 50 million galaxy classifications.

If, though, you would prefer to get to grips with what you can see with the naked eye, stick to Google.

The “sky” option in Google Earth (choose “switch to sky” in its “View” menu) is a good a guide to those twinkly pin-heads in the black soup as its main mode is to our own backyard.