You use the top-most of these buttons (or use the keyboard shortcut 'b') to draw bubbles onto the image. To draw a bubble, click on the approximate centre and then drag outward with your cursor until the bubble is roughly the right size. Small, blue adjustment pegs appear on the bubble you have drawn to allow you to alter its height or width, rotate it, or to drag the inner and outer edges to their correct position. As well as moving a bubble using your mouse you can also use the arrow keys on your keyboard.

The second and third buttons are then used to add/remove sections of the arc you have drawn. In this way you can not only draw the shape and size of the bubbles you see, but also show where portions of the bubble are missing.

If you like an image and want to save it to look at again later, then you can click the star. A list of all your recently classified images, and a list of your favourite images, can be found in the My Galaxy My Galaxy

If you see an object that you think may be interesting then you should flag it using this button (or use the keyboard shortcut 'a'). There are examples of some interesting objects further down this page. To mark these area of interest, you just click and drag over the item in question. Many of the objects that you see will not be very large so don't worry too much about how big you draw the box, just make sure you mark anything odd or unusual.

If you decide that you don't want to use a bubble or area that you have drawn, you can select it and then click on the 'X' delete button (or use the keyboard shortcut 'backspace'). You may also find it useful to hide one or all of your drawings to help you see parts of the image more clearly. You can either hide the currently selected object or all of them using these two, lower buttons (or the keyboard shortcuts 'h' and 'shift+h'). Once you are hiding an object, these will change 'show' and you can make them reappear.

Green knots are some of the very important features that we hope you will help us find as you mark bubbles in the Milky Way Project. Often seen on the periphery of bubbles or large collections of wispy, green material, these knots show us possible sites of star formation in our galaxy.

Green knots are very hard to find, but understanding their distribution in the galaxy and their relationship to to the other structures we see is essential to the aims of this project. We hope that you will help us mark down the locations of green knots where you see them.

More examples of green knots on Talk.

If you see any of these beautiful star clusters please be sure to mark them. They can be crystal clear or possibly slightly obscured but we want to know about them! They are very hard to find and their positions and distribution can help a lot of researchers. Many of these clusters are quite tightly bound together, others can be more dispersed.

More examples of star clusters on Talk.

Often you will see these beautiful, ghostly red objects in amongst the bubbles and stars in the Milky Way Project. They are areas of warm material and can often be seen either in isolation, or in amongst busy, bubbling regions of the galaxy.

There are some gorgeous examples of these that we know about but think that you will all be better at picking them out.

More examples of fuzzy red objects on Talk.

Although the Milky Project is all about looking in our own galaxy - we would also like you to try and spot other galaxies. Here at the Zooniverse we love galaxies and these are quite special. The galaxies you see in the images here may not have been seen before. They are only revealed in infrared light as they are usually obscured by the dust in our own galaxy.

Some work has been done to try and spot these elusive gems, but we think that the Zooniverse community could be excellent at finding them.

More examples of galaxies on Talk.

The material that we see in this project is dark to the naked eye. By looking in the infrared we pick out material that is not hot but rather cooler, and hence it does not emit visible light, but instead lower-energy infrared wavelengths. However there are still regions of yet colder and denser material that remain dark even to Spitzer's infrared red eye. These infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) are stark silhouettes on the brighter, usually green material seen in the images on this site.

IRDcs, or just 'Dark Nebulae' on our list of interesting objects, are possible sites of high-mass star formation and are of great interest to researchers.

More examples of dark nebulae on Talk.

Sometimes you will see bubbles that are too small to measure with the usual tools. In these cases you can mark them as 'small' bubbles.

These very small bubbles might appear small just because they are far away, but they may also be intrinsically small bubbles that we are interested in finding.

More examples of small bubbles on Talk.