In 1936, Edwin Hubble classified
galaxy shapes in the Hubble Sequence.
Not exact matches
The research team of international scientists wanted to figure out if the Milky Way matches the spiral
shape observed
in other
galaxies, as part of a larger study that aims to sharpen our image of our
galaxy.
And putting together a census of binary supermassive black holes from the early universe, he adds, might help researchers understand what role (if any) these dark duos had
in shaping galaxies during the billion or so years following the Big Bang.
The scientists will now combine the results of the Auriga Project work with data
in surveys from observatories like the Gaia mission, to better understand how mergers and collisions
shaped galaxies like our own.
Large numbers of
galaxies are elliptical
in shape, red and mostly made up of old stars.
One of the simulation's insights, reported
in the May 8 Nature, is the role that supermassive black holes must have played
in shaping galaxies.
Young star clusters and clouds of hydrogen that formed
in our
galaxy help trace the
shapes of the Milky Way's arms, so astronomers are reasonably certain that it has a spiral structure (see right).
Far fewer tidy spirals existed
in the ancient era, and far more
galaxies boasted peculiar, unclassifiable
shapes.
Since it was first discovered
in 1992, the curious
shape of the Honeycomb Nebula, which lurks
in a nearby
galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud, has been a puzzle.
Though their nuclei are still separated by a large distance, the
shapes of the
galaxies in Arp 256 are impressively distorted.
Though the
galaxy is over 2 million light - years away, the Hubble telescope is powerful enough to resolve individual stars
in a 61,000 - light - year - long stretch of the
galaxy's pancake -
shaped disk.
Above left: Galaxy cluster CL0024 +1654 bends the light of more distant
galaxies, producing the peculiar arc -
shaped formations
in this groundbreaking Hubble image.
Buckyballs, made of 60 carbon atoms arranged
in a geodesic sphere — the
shape made famous by the inventor — have been found beyond our
galaxy, suggesting they abound
in space.
In hurricanes and
galaxies, the body rotation spawns spiral
shapes: When the center turns faster than the periphery, waves within these phenomena get spun around into spirals.
Such mergers could give themselves away by their effect on the
shapes of the black holes» parent
galaxies, and
in infrared and ultraviolet afterglows.
Here
in our Local Group, for instance, some 50 - odd
galaxies nestle within a dumbbell -
shaped space 10 million light - years long.
Vogeley, Cai and others
in their field are keenly interested
in gauging voids»
shape, size, distribution and mass (they do have some — they're only virtually empty), much as we've done already for
galaxies and clusters.
Astronomers are now using the largest existing telescopes on the ground and
in space to better assess the composition, size and
shape of the newly discovered ancient
galaxies.
The image showed that the
galaxy had an arc
shape characteristic of gravitational lensing by an intervening
galaxy, Graham reported last month at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society
in Pittsburgh.
And
in one
galaxy called NGC 2992, the researchers detected two huge funnel -
shaped jets of gas streaming out from the
galaxy in opposite directions over a distance of 62 000 light years.
In theory it will make it possible for scientist to study what happened when the elliptic -
shaped galaxies formed — and when they died.
By combining the power of a «natural lens»
in space with the capability of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers made a surprising discovery — the first example of a compact yet massive, fast - spinning, disk -
shaped galaxy that stopped making stars only a few billion years after the big bang.
Why elliptic -
shaped galaxies stopped producing new stars way back
in the history of the universe has long puzzled astrophysicists.
Can this atypical system of stellar rotation observed
in MACS2129 - 1 be interpreted as a form of «prototype» representing an early stage
in the development of elliptic -
shaped galaxies?
Like normal
galaxies, LSB
galaxies come
in a wide variety of
shapes.
Furthermore the stellar motions differs markedly between the two main types:
In the Milky Way and in other disk - shaped galaxies stars rotate with a regularity that is predictable — whereas stellar motions in elliptic - shaped galaxies can be seen as rather more chaotic, says Sune Toft: «Here the stars seem to be all over the place, to move in all direction
In the Milky Way and
in other disk - shaped galaxies stars rotate with a regularity that is predictable — whereas stellar motions in elliptic - shaped galaxies can be seen as rather more chaotic, says Sune Toft: «Here the stars seem to be all over the place, to move in all direction
in other disk -
shaped galaxies stars rotate with a regularity that is predictable — whereas stellar motions
in elliptic - shaped galaxies can be seen as rather more chaotic, says Sune Toft: «Here the stars seem to be all over the place, to move in all direction
in elliptic -
shaped galaxies can be seen as rather more chaotic, says Sune Toft: «Here the stars seem to be all over the place, to move
in all direction
in all directions.
The finding is remarkable, as this pattern of stellar rotation
in a dead
galaxy strongly contradicts prevalent astrophysical theory regarding the formation of elliptical -
shaped galaxies shortly after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.
Such colossal
galaxies, often also called spheroids because of their
shape, typically pack
in stars ten times as densely
in the central regions as
in our home
galaxy, the Milky Way, and have about ten times its mass.
To identify the final
shapes of
galaxies after mergers observationally, the group studied the distribution of gas
in 37
galaxies that are
in their final stages of merging.
They found four smudges of light — possibly
galaxies —
in the area, as well as a blob -
shaped galaxy full of ancient stars on the region's periphery.
This visible - light image taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals a pancake -
shaped disk of gas around an extremely bright star
in our Milky Way
galaxy.
In the 1970s, astronomers Vera Rubin and Kent Ford used the same basic arguments to show, in much more convincing detail, that spiral galaxies appear to keep their shapes because of the gravitational glue from nearby dark matte
In the 1970s, astronomers Vera Rubin and Kent Ford used the same basic arguments to show,
in much more convincing detail, that spiral galaxies appear to keep their shapes because of the gravitational glue from nearby dark matte
in much more convincing detail, that spiral
galaxies appear to keep their
shapes because of the gravitational glue from nearby dark matter.
Harnessing the power of both the Hubble Space Telescope and the citizen science project
Galaxy Zoo, scientists from the University of Portsmouth have found that bar -
shaped features
in spiral
galaxies accelerate the
galaxy aging process.
The effects of the cluster's gravity can be seen
in the blue arcs and distorted
shapes that are scattered across the frame, including
galaxies that seem to be bleeding into the surrounding space.
Many
galaxies with spiral
shapes (like the one we live
in, the Milky Way) also have central bar -
shaped features.
When looking through 15 - year - old radio data from several observatories
in 2013, astronomers found clumpy segments along a ring
shape in our
galaxy; when they searched for it
in visible light, they came up empty.
Thanks to an improved algorithm to analyze the images, Schrabback's team could study
in great detail the
shapes of over 446,000
galaxies in a 1.64 square degree patch of sky.
Most of the
galaxy's stars, including the sun, reside
in a thin, pancake -
shaped disk, but ancient stars populate a halo surrounding the disk.
«We could use the individual FRB pulses of different brightnesses and durations to learn about the size and
shape of asteroids
in a belt around a star
in another
galaxy,» says Emily Petroff at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy.
The discovery, reported
in July by Karl Glazebrook of Johns Hopkins University, calls into question the prevailing theory about when and how the Milky Way and other
galaxies began to take
shape.
They used a supercomputer to simulate the effect that living
in a giant cluster of
galaxies has on the
shape and color of its members.
The discovery that many small
galaxies throughout the universe do not «swarm» around larger ones like bees do but «dance»
in orderly disc -
shaped orbits is a challenge to our understanding of how the universe formed and evolved.
DEEP VIEW This Hubble Space Telescope image of nearly 10,000
galaxies of different ages, sizes and
shapes is one of over 100 pictures
in a new illustrated history of science.
This pair of
galaxies is named after the American astronomer Halton Arp, the creator of the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, a catalogue of weirdly - shaped galaxies that was originally published
galaxies is named after the American astronomer Halton Arp, the creator of the Atlas of Peculiar
Galaxies, a catalogue of weirdly - shaped galaxies that was originally published
Galaxies, a catalogue of weirdly -
shaped galaxies that was originally published
galaxies that was originally published
in 1966.
The mass distribution
in a
galaxy acts rather like a lens
shaped like the bottom of a wineglass, and produces multiple images of background objects, with images stretched out into arcs and rings.
Galaxies come in irregular shapes, too, including many dwarf g
Galaxies come
in irregular
shapes, too, including many dwarf
galaxiesgalaxies.
In the background are the blue and red elongated
shapes of many other
galaxies, which lie at vast distances from us — but which can all be seen by the sharp eye of Hubble.
Arp compiled the catalogue
in a bid to understand how
galaxies evolved and changed
shape over time, something he felt to be poorly understood.
Perhaps like all
galaxies it started out as a compact object but failed to accrete more material to grow
in size to form a magnificent pinwheel -
shaped galaxy.
There are three main types of
galaxies: oval -
shaped ellipticals, disk - like spirals and irregulars that don't quite fit
in with either of the former classes.