If you subscribe to our newsletters, the name “Grant” probably sounds familiar to you. Grant (our Project Manager and basically the ‘backbone of the Zooniverse’) has been with us for nearly 9 years, and with a heavy heart we’re sad to report he’s finally moving on to his next great adventure.

To mark his departure, we’ve announced “Grant’s Great Leaving Challenge”. The goal of this challenge is to collect 100,000 new classifications for the four Featured Projects on the homepage. Starting yesterday, if you submit at least 10 classifications total for these projects your name will automatically be entered to win one of three prizes. Importantly, you must be logged-in while classifying to be eligible for the draw. The challenge will end on Sunday, March 27th at midnight (GMT), and the winners will be announced on Tuesday, March 29th.

While we aren’t divulging what the prizes are, it might tempt you to hear that they’ll be personalised by Grant himself…

Read on to learn about the four featured projects, and what you can do to help them out.

Penguin Watch
Penguins – globally loved, but under threat. Research shows that in some regions, penguin populations are in decline; but why? Begin monitoring penguins to help us answer this question. With over 100 sites to explore, we need your help now more than ever!

Planet Hunters NGTS
The Next-Generation Transit Survey have been searching for transiting exoplanets around the brightest stars in the sky. We need your help sifting through the observations flagged by the computers to search for hidden worlds that might have been missed in the NGTS team’s review. Most of the planets in the dataset have likely been found already, but you just might be the first to find a new exoplanet not known before!

Dingo? Bingo!
The Myall Lakes Dingo Project aims to develop and test non-lethal tools for dingo management, and to further our understanding and appreciation of this iconic Australian carnivore. We have 64 camera-traps across our study site, and need your help to identify the animals they detect – including dingoes.

Weather Rescue at Sea
The aim of the Weather Rescue At Sea project is to construct and extended the global surface temperature record back to the 1780s, based on the air temperature observations recorded across the planet. This will be achieved by crowd-sourcing the recovery (or data rescue) of the weather observations from historical ship logbooks, station records, weather journals and other sources, to produce a longer, and more consistent dataset of global surface temperature.

Let’s send Grant off with a bang. Happy classifying!