Happy New Year Everyone! We can’t thank you enough for making Zooniverse possible. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!

We have so much to celebrate from 2023. 

• We welcomed our 2.5 millionth registered participant!
  • To date: 2.6 million registered participants from 190 countries
  • Top countries in 2023: US, UK, Germany, India, Canada, Australia
• 400 Zooniverse projects publicly launched
  • 40 new projects in 2023 alone; ~90 active projects at any given time
  • Each led by a different research team. Zooniverse partners with hundreds of universities, research institutes, museums, libraries, zoos, NGOs, and more
• 400 peer-reviewed publications (30 in 2023 alone)
• 780 million classifications (65 million classifications in 2023 alone)
• 5 million posts in the Zooniverse ‘Talk’ discussion forums (680K in 2023 alone)
• 19.5 million hours of participation
  • 1.6 million hours in 2023 alone; equivalent to 780 FTEs

We welcome you to join us this Thursday for a YouTube LiveStream from 2:15pm-3:15pm CST (8:15pm GMT; Friday 1:15am in India) celebrating Zooniverse 2023 Milestones as part of a Press Conference for the American Astronomical Society Meeting happening this week in New Orleans.

Bonus: the Press Conference will include a slew of other astronomy related discoveries, mysteries, and intrigues. Connect via https://www.youtube.com/@AASPressOffice/streams (open to the public). Also, throughout the week we’ll post on https://twitter.com/the_zooniverse (with the hashtag #aas243) about our experiences at the conference. 

Milestones are great to celebrate, but we all know a deep magic is in the everyday moments – catching a penguin chick in the midst of a funny dance on Penguin Watch, hearing a coo that reminds you of your own little loves in Maturity of Baby Sounds, uncovering a lost genealogical clue in Civil War Bluejackets, connecting with someone from the other side of the globe who shares your interests in chimps and their fascinating behaviors through the Talk discussion forums, and more, and more. Wonderful if you’d like to share one of your everyday Zooniverse moments with us by tagging @the_zooniverse on X (formerly Twitter) or sharing via email at contact@zooniverse.org. Hearing your moments helps us better understand how the Zooniverse community creates meaning and impact from these experiences (and what we can do to nurture those moments). 

Wishing you a joyful and gentle 2024. Cheers to new beginnings and continued adventures together. 

Laura
Zooniverse PI, VP Science Engagement, Adler Planetarium in Chicago