The Morphs collaboration was a coordinated study to determine the morphologies of galaxies in distant clusters and to investigate the evolution of galaxies as a function of environment and epoch. Eleven clusters were examined and a detailed ground-based and space-based study was carried out.

The project was begun in 1997 based upon the earlier observations by two groups using data from images derived from the pre-refurbished Hubble Space Telescope

Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope that was carried into orbit by a Space Shuttle in 1990 and remains in operation. A 2.4 meter aperture telescope in low Earth orbit, Hubble's four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared...

. It was a collaboration of Alan Dressler

Alan Dressler

Alan Michael Dressler is an American astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science of Washington, D.C.. Among his works is the popularization Voyage To The Great Attractor: Exploring Intergalactic Space....

 and Augustus Oemler, Jr., at Observatory of the Carnegie Institute of Washington, Warrick J. Couch at the University of New South Wales

University of New South Wales

The University of New South Wales , is a research-focused university based in Kensington, a suburb in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia...

, Richard Ellis

Richard Ellis (astronomer)

Richard Salisbury Ellis CBE FRS is the Steele Professor of Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology ....

 at Caltech

California Institute of Technology

The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...

, Bianca M. Poggianti at the University of Padua

University of Padua

The University of Padua is a premier Italian university located in the city of Padua, Italy. The University of Padua was founded in 1222 as a school of law and was one of the most prominent universities in early modern Europe. It is among the earliest universities of the world and the second...

, Amy Barger

Amy Barger

Dr. Amy J. Barger is an American astronomer whose discoveries have most concerned quasars, black holes, and other far distant objects. She helped show that the activity of black holes in nearby galaxies was greater and more recent than expected. She also worked with others on discoveries...

 at the University of Hawaii's

University of Hawaii

The University of Hawaii System, formally the University of Hawaii and popularly known as UH, is a public, co-educational college and university system that confers associate, bachelor, master, and doctoral degrees through three university campuses, seven community college campuses, an employment...

 Institute for Astronomy

Institute for Astronomy

The Institute for Astronomy is a research unit within the University of Hawaii system, led by Günther Hasinger as Director. IfA main headquarters are located at 2680 Woodlawn Drive in Honolulu, Hawaii, , on the University of Hawaii at Mānoa campus. Additional facilities are located at Pukalani,...

, Harvey Butcher

Harvey Raymond Butcher

Harvey Raymond Butcher III is an astronomer who has made significant contributions in observational astronomy and instrumentation which have advanced understanding of the formation of stars and of the universe. He received a B.Sc...

 at ASTRON

ASTRON

ASTRON is the Netherlands Foundation for Research in Astronomy. ASTRON is an abbreviation of the Dutch Stichting ASTRonomisch Onderzoek in Nederland. This translates to NFRA in English, which is sometimes used to refer to ASTRON in English texts. Its main offices are in Dwingeloo at the site of the...

, and Ray M. Sharples and Ian Smail at Durham University

Durham University

The University of Durham, commonly known as Durham University, is a university in Durham, England. It was founded by Act of Parliament in 1832 and granted a Royal Charter in 1837...

. Results were published through 2000.

The collaboration sought answers to the differences in the origins of the various galaxy types — elliptical

Elliptical galaxy

An elliptical galaxy is a galaxy having an approximately ellipsoidal shape and a smooth, nearly featureless brightness profile. They range in shape from nearly spherical to highly flat and in size from hundreds of millions to over one trillion stars...

, lenticular

Lenticular galaxy

A lenticular galaxy is a type of galaxy which is intermediate between an elliptical galaxy and a spiral galaxy in galaxy morphological classification schemes. Lenticular galaxies are disk galaxies which have used up or lost most of their interstellar matter and therefore have very little ongoing...

, and spiral

Spiral galaxy

A spiral galaxy is a certain kind of galaxy originally described by Edwin Hubble in his 1936 work The Realm of the Nebulae and, as such, forms part of the Hubble sequence. Spiral galaxies consist of a flat, rotating disk containing stars, gas and dust, and a central concentration of stars known as...

. The studies found that elliptical galaxies were the oldest and formed from the violent merger of other galaxies about two to three billion years after the Big Bang

Big Bang

The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model that explains the early development of the Universe. According to the Big Bang theory, the Universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded rapidly. This rapid expansion caused the young Universe to cool and resulted in...

. Star formation in elliptical galaxies ceased about that time. On the other hand, new stars are still forming in the spiral arms of spiral galaxies. Lenticular galaxies (SO) are intermediate between the first two. They contain structures similar to spiral arms, but devoid of the gas and new stars of the spiral galaxies. Lenticular galaxies are the prevalent form in rich galaxy clusters, which suggests that spirals may be transformed into lenticular galaxies as time progresses. The exact process may be related to high galactic density, or to the total mass in a rich cluster’s central core. The Morphs collaboration found that one of the principal mechanisms of this transformation involves the interaction among spiral galaxies, as they fall toward the core of the cluster.

The Inamori Magellan Areal Camera and Spectrograph (IMACS) Cluster Building Survey is the follow-on project to the Morphs collaboration.

External links

• "The Morphs" Durham University, United Kingdom