A
spiral galaxy is a certain kind of
galaxyA galaxy is a massive, gravitationally bound system that consists of stars and stellar remnants, an interstellar medium of gas and dust, and an important but poorly understood component tentatively dubbed dark matter. The word galaxy is derived from the Greek galaxias , literally "milky", a...
originally described by
Edwin HubbleEdwin Powell Hubble was an American astronomer who profoundly changed the understanding of the universe by confirming the existence of galaxies other than the Milky Way - our own galaxy...
in his 1936 work
The Realm of the Nebulae and, as such, forms part of the
Hubble sequenceThe Hubble sequence is a morphological classification scheme for galaxies invented by Edwin Hubble in 1926. It is often known colloquially as the Hubble tuning-fork diagram because of the shape in which it is traditionally represented....
. Spiral galaxies consist of a flat, rotating disk containing
starA star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...
s,
gas and dustIn astronomy, the interstellar medium is the matter that exists in the space between the star systems in a galaxy. This matter includes gas in ionic, atomic, and molecular form, dust, and cosmic rays. It fills interstellar space and blends smoothly into the surrounding intergalactic space...
, and a central concentration of stars known as the
bulgeIn astronomy, a bulge is a tightly packed group of stars within a larger formation. The term almost exclusively refers to the central group of stars found in most spiral galaxies...
. These are surrounded by a much fainter
haloThe term galactic halo is used to denote an extended, roughly spherical component of a galaxy, which extends beyond the main, visible component. It can refer to any of several distinct components which share these properties:* the galactic spheroid...
of stars, many of which reside in
globular clusterA globular cluster is a spherical collection of stars that orbits a galactic core as a satellite. Globular clusters are very tightly bound by gravity, which gives them their spherical shapes and relatively high stellar densities toward their centers. The name of this category of star cluster is...
s.
Spiral galaxies are named for the
spiralIn mathematics, a spiral is a curve which emanates from a central point, getting progressively farther away as it revolves around the point.-Spiral or helix:...
structures that extend from the center into the disk. The spiral arms are sites of ongoing star formation and are brighter than the surrounding disk because of the young, hot
OB starOB stars are hot, massive stars of spectral types O or B which form in loosely organized groups called OB associations. They are short lived, and thus don't move very far from where they were formed within their life. During their lifetime, they will emit copious amounts of ultraviolet radiation...
s that inhabit them.
Roughly two-thirds of all spirals are observed to have an additional component in the form of a bar-like structure, extending from the central bulge, at the ends of which the spiral arms begin. Our own
Milky WayThe Milky Way is the galaxy that contains the Solar System. This name derives from its appearance as a dim un-resolved "milky" glowing band arching across the night sky...
has recently (in the 1990s) been confirmed to be a
barred spiralA barred spiral galaxy is a spiral galaxy with a central bar-shaped structure composed of stars. Bars are found in approximately two-thirds of all spiral galaxies...
, although the bar itself is difficult to observe from our position within the Galactic disk. The most convincing evidence for its existence comes from a recent survey, performed by the
Spitzer Space TelescopeThe Spitzer Space Telescope , formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility is an infrared space observatory launched in 2003...
, of stars in the Galactic center.
Together with
irregular galaxiesAn irregular galaxy is a galaxy that does not have a distinct regular shape, like a spiral or an elliptical galaxy. The shape of an irregular galaxy is uncommon – they do not fall into any of the regular classes of the Hubble sequence, and they are often chaotic in appearance, with neither a...
, spiral galaxies make up approximately 60% of galaxies in the local
UniverseThe Universe is commonly defined as the totality of everything that exists, including all matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space. Definitions and usage vary and similar terms include the cosmos, the world and nature...
. They are mostly found in low-density regions and are rare in the centers of galaxy clusters.
Structure
Spiral galaxies consist of four distinct components:
- A flat, rotating disc of (mostly newly created) star
A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...
s and interstellar matterIn astronomy, the interstellar medium is the matter that exists in the space between the star systems in a galaxy. This matter includes gas in ionic, atomic, and molecular form, dust, and cosmic rays. It fills interstellar space and blends smoothly into the surrounding intergalactic space...
- A central stellar bulge
In astronomy, a bulge is a tightly packed group of stars within a larger formation. The term almost exclusively refers to the central group of stars found in most spiral galaxies...
of mainly older stars, which resembles an elliptical galaxyAn 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...
- A near-spherical halo
The term galactic halo is used to denote an extended, roughly spherical component of a galaxy, which extends beyond the main, visible component. It can refer to any of several distinct components which share these properties:* the galactic spheroid...
of stars, including many in globular clusters
- A supermassive black hole
A supermassive black hole is the largest type of black hole in a galaxy, in the order of hundreds of thousands to billions of solar masses. Most, and possibly all galaxies, including the Milky Way, are believed to contain supermassive black holes at their centers.Supermassive black holes have...
at the very center of the central bulge
The relative importance, in terms of mass, brightness and size, of the different components varies from galaxy to galaxy.
Spiral arms
Spiral arms are regions of
starA star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...
s that extend from the center of
spiralAn unbarred spiral galaxy is a type of spiral galaxy without a central bar, or one that is not a barred spiral galaxy. It is designated with an SA in the galaxy morphological classification scheme.The Sombrero Galaxy is an unbarred spiral galaxy....
and
barred spiralA barred spiral galaxy is a spiral galaxy with a central bar-shaped structure composed of stars. Bars are found in approximately two-thirds of all spiral galaxies...
galaxies. These long, thin regions resemble a spiral and thus give spiral galaxies their name. Naturally, different classifications of spiral galaxies have distinct arm-structures. Sc and SBc galaxies, for instance, have very "loose" arms, whereas Sa and SBa galaxies have tightly wrapped arms (with reference to the Hubble sequence). Either way, spiral arms contain a great many young, blue stars (due to the high mass density and the high rate of star formation), which make the arms so remarkable.
Galactic bulge
A
bulgeIn astronomy, a bulge is a tightly packed group of stars within a larger formation. The term almost exclusively refers to the central group of stars found in most spiral galaxies...
is a huge, tightly packed group of
starA star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...
s. The term commonly refers to the central group of stars found in most spiral galaxies.
Using the Hubble classification, the bulge of Sa galaxies is usually composed of population II stars, that are old, red stars with low metal content. Further, the bulge of Sa and SBa galaxies tends to be large. In contrast, the bulges of Sc and SBc galaxies are much smaller and are composed of young, blue Population I stars. Some bulges have similar properties to those of elliptical galaxies (scaled down to lower mass and luminosity); others simply appear as higher density centers of disks, with properties similar to disk galaxies.
Many bulges are thought to host a
supermassive black holeA supermassive black hole is the largest type of black hole in a galaxy, in the order of hundreds of thousands to billions of solar masses. Most, and possibly all galaxies, including the Milky Way, are believed to contain supermassive black holes at their centers.Supermassive black holes have...
at their centers. Such black holes have never been directly observed, but many indirect proofs exist. In our own galaxy, for instance, the object called Sagittarius A* is believed to be a supermassive black hole. There is a tight correlation between the mass of the black hole and the velocity dispersion of the stars in the bulge, the
M-sigma relationThe M-sigma relation is an empirical correlation between the stellar velocity dispersion \sigma of a galaxy bulge and the mass M of the supermassive black hole atthe galaxy's center.The relation can be expressed mathematically as...
.
Galactic spheroid
The bulk of the stars in a spiral galaxy are located either close to a single plane (the
galactic planeThe galactic plane is the plane in which the majority of a disk-shaped galaxy's mass lies. The directions perpendicular to the galactic plane point to the galactic poles...
) in more or less conventional circular
orbitIn physics, an orbit is the gravitationally curved path of an object around a point in space, for example the orbit of a planet around the center of a star system, such as the Solar System...
s around the center of the galaxy (the galactic centre), or in a
spheroidA spheroid, or ellipsoid of revolution is a quadric surface obtained by rotating an ellipse about one of its principal axes; in other words, an ellipsoid with two equal semi-diameters....
al
galactic bulgeIn astronomy, a bulge is a tightly packed group of stars within a larger formation. The term almost exclusively refers to the central group of stars found in most spiral galaxies...
around the galactic core.
However, some stars inhabit a
spheroidal halo or
galactic spheroid, a type of
galactic haloThe term galactic halo is used to denote an extended, roughly spherical component of a galaxy, which extends beyond the main, visible component. It can refer to any of several distinct components which share these properties:* the galactic spheroid...
. The orbital behaviour of these stars is disputed, but they may describe
retrogradeRetrograde motion is motion in the direction opposite to the movement of something else, and is the contrary of direct or prograde motion. This motion can be the orbit of one body about another body or about some other point, or the rotation of a single body about its axis, or other phenomena such...
and/or highly
inclinedInclination in general is the angle between a reference plane and another plane or axis of direction.-Orbits:The inclination is one of the six orbital parameters describing the shape and orientation of a celestial orbit...
orbits, or not move in regular orbits at all. Halo stars may be acquired from small galaxies which fall into and
mergeGalaxy mergers can occur when two galaxies collide. They are the most violent type of galaxy interaction. Although galaxy mergers do not involve stars or star systems actually colliding, due to the vast distances between stars in most circumstances, the gravitational interactions between galaxies...
with the spiral galaxy—for example, the
Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical GalaxyThe Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy is an elliptical loop-shaped satellite galaxy of the Milky Way Galaxy. It consists of four globular clusters, the main cluster being discovered in 1994...
is in the process of merging with the Milky Way and observations show that some stars in the halo of the Milky Way have been acquired from it.
Unlike the galactic disc, the halo seems to be free of dust, and in further contrast, stars in the galactic halo are of Population II, much older and with much lower
metallicityIn astronomy and physical cosmology, the metallicity of an object is the proportion of its matter made up of chemical elements other than hydrogen and helium...
than their Population I cousins in the galactic disc (but similar to those in the galactic bulge). The galactic halo also contains many
globular clusterA globular cluster is a spherical collection of stars that orbits a galactic core as a satellite. Globular clusters are very tightly bound by gravity, which gives them their spherical shapes and relatively high stellar densities toward their centers. The name of this category of star cluster is...
s.
The motion of halo stars does bring them through the disc on occasion, and a number of small
red dwarfAccording to the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, a red dwarf star is a small and relatively cool star, of the main sequence, either late K or M spectral type....
stars close to the
SunThe Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...
are thought to belong to the galactic halo, for example
Kapteyn's StarKapteyn's Star is a class M1 red dwarf star about 13 light years from Earth in the southern constellation of Pictor. With a magnitude of nearly 9 it is visible through binoculars or a telescope.-History:...
and
Groombridge 1830Groombridge 1830 is a star in the constellation Ursa Major.-Description:It is a yellowish class G8 subdwarf catalogued by Stephen Groombridge with the Groombridge Transit Circle between 1806 and the 1830s and published posthumously in his star catalog, Catalogue of Circumpolar Stars...
. Due to their irregular movement around the centre of the galaxy—if they do so at all—these stars often display unusually high
proper motionThe proper motion of a star is its angular change in position over time as seen from the center of mass of the solar system. It is measured in seconds of arc per year, arcsec/yr, where 3600 arcseconds equal one degree. This contrasts with radial velocity, which is the time rate of change in...
.
Origin of the spiral structure
The pioneer of studies of the rotation of the Galaxy and the formation of the spiral arms was
Bertil LindbladBertil Lindblad Bertil Lindblad Bertil Lindblad (Örebro, 26 November 1895 – Saltsjöbaden (outside Stockholm, 25 June 1965) was a Swedish astronomer.After finishing his secondary education at Örebro högre allmänna läroverk, Lindblad matriculated at Uppsala University in 1914...
in 1925. He realized that the idea of stars arranged permanently in a spiral shape was untenable due to the "winding dilemma". Since the angular speed of rotation of the galactic disk varies with distance from the centre of the galaxy (via a standard solar system type of gravitational model), a radial arm (like a spoke) would quickly become curved as the galaxy rotates. The arm would, after a few galactic rotations, become increasingly curved and wind around the galaxy ever tighter. This is called the
winding problem. Measurements in the late 1960s showed that the orbital velocity of stars in spiral galaxies with respect to their distance from the galactic center is indeed higher than expected from
Newtonian dynamicsIn physics, the Newtonian dynamics is understood as the dynamics of a particle or a small body according to Newton's laws of motion.-Mathematical generalizations:...
but still cannot explain the stability of the spiral structure.
Since the 1960s, there have been two leading hypotheses or models for the spiral structures of galaxies:
- Star formation caused by density waves
Density wave theory or the Lin-Shu density wave theory is a theory proposed by C.C. Lin and Frank Shu in the mid-1960s to explain spiral arm structure of spiral galaxies. Their theory introduces the idea of long-lived quasistatic density waves , which are sections of the galactic disk that have...
in the galactic disk of the galaxy.
- The SSPSF model
The SSPSF model of star formation was proposed by Mueller & Arnett in 1976, generalized afterward by Gerola & Seiden in 1978 and Gerola, Seiden, & Schulman in 1980...
– Star formation caused by shock waves in the interstellar mediumIn astronomy, the interstellar medium is the matter that exists in the space between the star systems in a galaxy. This matter includes gas in ionic, atomic, and molecular form, dust, and cosmic rays. It fills interstellar space and blends smoothly into the surrounding intergalactic space...
.
These different hypotheses do not have to be mutually exclusive, as they may explain different types of spiral arms.
Density wave model
Bertil LindbladBertil Lindblad Bertil Lindblad Bertil Lindblad (Örebro, 26 November 1895 – Saltsjöbaden (outside Stockholm, 25 June 1965) was a Swedish astronomer.After finishing his secondary education at Örebro högre allmänna läroverk, Lindblad matriculated at Uppsala University in 1914...
proposed that the arms represent regions of enhanced density (density waves) that rotate more slowly than the galaxy’s stars and gas. As gas enters a density wave, it gets squeezed and makes new stars, some of which are short-lived blue stars that light the arms.
This idea was developed into
density wave theoryDensity wave theory or the Lin-Shu density wave theory is a theory proposed by C.C. Lin and Frank Shu in the mid-1960s to explain spiral arm structure of spiral galaxies. Their theory introduces the idea of long-lived quasistatic density waves , which are sections of the galactic disk that have...
by C. C. Lin and
Frank ShuFrank Shu , is an astrophysicist, author and professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley and University of California, San Diego and the university president of the National Tsing Hua University....
in 1964. They suggested that the spiral arms were manifestations of spiral density waves, attempting to explain the large-scale structure of spirals in terms of a small-amplitude wave propagating with fixed angular velocity, that revolves around the galaxy at a speed different from that of the galaxy's gas and stars.
Historical theory of Lin and Shu
The first acceptable theory for the spiral structure was devised by C. C. Lin and Frank Shu in 1964. They suggested that the spiral arms were manifestations of spiral density waves, they assumed that the stars travel in slightly elliptical orbits, and that the orientations of their orbits is correlated i.e. the ellipses vary in their orientation (one to another) in a smooth way with increasing distance from the galactic center. This is illustrated in the diagram. It is clear that the elliptical orbits come close together in certain areas to give the effect of arms. Stars therefore do not remain forever in the position that we now see them in, but pass through the arms as they travel in their orbits.
Star formation caused by density waves
The following hypotheses exist for star formation caused by density waves:
- As gas clouds move into the density wave, the local mass density increases. Since the criteria for cloud collapse (the Jeans instability
In physics, the Jeans instability causes the collapse of interstellar gas clouds and subsequent star formation. It occurs when the internal gas pressure is not strong enough to prevent gravitational collapse of a region filled with matter...
) depends on density, a higher density makes it more likely for clouds to collapse and form stars.
- As the compression wave goes through, it triggers star formation on the leading edge of the spiral arms.
- As clouds get swept up by the spiral arms, they collide with one another and drive shock waves
Shock Waves, , is a 1977 horror movie written and directed by Ken Wiederhorn...
through the gas, which in turn causes the gas to collapse and form stars.
More young stars in spiral arms
The arms appear brighter because there are more young stars (hence more massive, bright stars). These massive, bright stars also die out quickly, which would leave just the darker background stellar distribution behind the waves, hence making the waves visible.
While stars, therefore, do not remain forever in the position that we now see them in, they also do not follow the arms. The arms simply appear to pass through the stars as the stars travel in their orbits.
Alignment of spin axis with cosmic voids
Recent results suggest that the orientation of the spin axis of spiral galaxies is not a chance result, but instead they are preferentially aligned along the surface of
cosmic voidsIn astronomy, voids are the empty spaces between filaments, the largest-scale structures in the Universe, that contain very few, or no, galaxies. They were first discovered in 1978 during a pioneering study by Stephen Gregory and Laird A. Thompson at the Kitt Peak National Observatory...
. That is, spiral galaxies tend to be oriented at a high angle of inclination relative to the large-scale structure of the surroundings. They have been described as lining up like "beads on a string," with their axis of rotation following the
filamentsIn physical cosmology, galaxy filaments, also called supercluster complexes or great walls, are, so far, the largest known cosmic structures in the universe. They are massive, thread-like structures with a typical length of 50 to 80 megaparsecs h-1 that form the boundaries between large voids in...
around the edges of the voids.
New theory of evolution
In April 2011 a presentation to the
Royal Astronomical SocietyThe Royal Astronomical Society is a learned society that began as the Astronomical Society of London in 1820 to support astronomical research . It became the Royal Astronomical Society in 1831 on receiving its Royal Charter from William IV...
's April 2011 National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno, Wales by postgraduate student Robert Grand, suggested that spiral arms do not rotate rigidly at a constant angular velocity about the galactic centre. This contradicts a 50 year old theory called Spiral Density Wave Theory (SDWT), which states that the spiral arm pattern we see is actually a wave pattern, that rotates independently of star and inter-stellar matter that follow the standard rotation curve of the galaxy.Stars that move faster than the arms can overtake them and move through them. Consequently, stars outside this radius move slower than the arm and fall behind. Rather than a long-lived rigidly rotating wave pattern found in SDWT, Grand's simulations suggested that the arms rotate with a pattern speed that decreases with radius, and that they are transient features, with some arms breaking up and new ones being formed over periods of 80 to 100 million years. Instead of stars rotating independently of the arm pattern, they co-rotate at every radius, as the arm pattern speed traces very well the rotation curve of matter. The destruction of the arms is due to a declining pattern speed, which means that the arms begin to wind up and so break to avoid the well-known Wind-Up problem. This pattern of arm formation and destruction has not been observed in real galaxies, mainly because this pattern would take tens of millions of years to observe from start to finish. As observers, we can only observe what is a relative "snapshot" of a galaxy's evolution, and since there are always new arms forming as older ones die, there is always a spiral pattern present. Therefore, a simple glance at a galaxy will not yield evidence either way. A real observational contribution will come from the Gaia satellite, due to be launched in the coming years.
Gravitationally aligned orbits
In a recent paper published in Proc. Roy. Soc. A, Charles Francis and Erik Anderson showed from observations of motions of over 20 000 local stars (within 300 parsecs), that, contrary to density wave theory, stars do move along spiral arms, and described how mutual gravity between stars causes orbits to align on logarithmic spirals. When the theory is applied to gas, collisions between gas clouds generate the molecular clouds in which
new starsA protostar is a large mass that forms by contraction out of the gas of a giant molecular cloud in the interstellar medium. The protostellar phase is an early stage in the process of star formation. For a one solar-mass star it lasts about 100,000 years...
form, and evolution towards grand-design bisymmetric spirals is explained.
Spiral nebula
"Spiral nebula" is an old term for a spiral galaxy. Until the early 20th century, most astronomers believed that objects like the
Whirlpool GalaxyThe Whirlpool Galaxy is an interacting grand-design spiral galaxy that is estimated to be 23 ± 4 million light-years from the Milky Way Galaxy. in the constellation Canes Venatici...
were just one more form of
nebulaA nebula is an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen gas, helium gas and other ionized gases...
that were within our own
Milky WayThe Milky Way is the galaxy that contains the Solar System. This name derives from its appearance as a dim un-resolved "milky" glowing band arching across the night sky...
galaxy. The idea that they might instead be other galaxies, independent of the Milky Way, was the subject of
the Great DebateIn astronomy, the Great Debate, also called the Shapley–Curtis Debate, was an influential debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis which concerned the nature of spiral nebulae and the size of the universe...
of 1920, between Heber Curtis of
Lick ObservatoryThe Lick Observatory is an astronomical observatory, owned and operated by the University of California. It is situated on the summit of Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose, California, USA...
and
Harlow ShapleyHarlow Shapley was an American astronomer.-Career:He was born on a farm in Nashville, Missouri, and dropped out of school with only the equivalent of a fifth-grade education...
of Mt. Wilson Observatory. In 1926,
Edwin HubbleEdwin Powell Hubble was an American astronomer who profoundly changed the understanding of the universe by confirming the existence of galaxies other than the Milky Way - our own galaxy...
observed Cepheid variables in several spiral nebulae, including the
Andromeda GalaxyThe Andromeda Galaxy is a spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Andromeda. It is also known as Messier 31, M31, or NGC 224, and is often referred to as the Great Andromeda Nebula in older texts. Andromeda is the nearest spiral galaxy to the...
, proving that they are, in fact, entire galaxies outside our own. The term "spiral nebula" has since fallen into disuse.
The Milky Way
The
Milky WayThe Milky Way is the galaxy that contains the Solar System. This name derives from its appearance as a dim un-resolved "milky" glowing band arching across the night sky...
was once considered an ordinary spiral galaxy. Astronomers first began to suspect that the Milky Way is a
barred spiral galaxyA barred spiral galaxy is a spiral galaxy with a central bar-shaped structure composed of stars. Bars are found in approximately two-thirds of all spiral galaxies...
in the 1990s. Their suspicions were confirmed by the
Spitzer Space TelescopeThe Spitzer Space Telescope , formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility is an infrared space observatory launched in 2003...
observations in 2005 which showed the galaxy's central bar to be larger than previously suspected.
Famous examples
- Triangulum Galaxy
- Whirlpool Galaxy
- Andromeda Galaxy
The Andromeda Galaxy is a spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Andromeda. It is also known as Messier 31, M31, or NGC 224, and is often referred to as the Great Andromeda Nebula in older texts. Andromeda is the nearest spiral galaxy to the...
- Sunflower Galaxy
The Sunflower Galaxy is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici consisting of a central disc surrounded by many short spiral arm segments...
- Pinwheel Galaxy
The Pinwheel Galaxy is a face-on spiral galaxy distanced 21 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major, first discovered by Pierre Méchain on March 27, 1781, and communicated to Charles Messier who verified its position for inclusion in the Messier Catalogue as one of its final...
Components
- Galactic disk
- Bulge (astronomy)
In astronomy, a bulge is a tightly packed group of stars within a larger formation. The term almost exclusively refers to the central group of stars found in most spiral galaxies...
- Galactic halo
The term galactic halo is used to denote an extended, roughly spherical component of a galaxy, which extends beyond the main, visible component. It can refer to any of several distinct components which share these properties:* the galactic spheroid...
- Galactic corona
The terms galactic corona and gaseous corona have been used in the first decade of the 21st century to describe a hot, ionised, gaseous component in the Galactic halo of the Milky Way...
Classification
- Galaxy color-magnitude diagram
The Galaxy color-magnitude diagram shows the relationship between absolute magnitude, luminosity, and mass of galaxies. A preliminary description of the three areas of this diagram was made in 2003 by Eric F. Bell et al...
- Galaxy morphological classification
- Hubble sequence
The Hubble sequence is a morphological classification scheme for galaxies invented by Edwin Hubble in 1926. It is often known colloquially as the Hubble tuning-fork diagram because of the shape in which it is traditionally represented....
- Disc galaxy
Disc galaxies are galaxies which have discs, a flattened circular volume of stars. These galaxies may, or may not include a central non-disc-like region .Disc galaxy types include* spiral galaxies** barless spiral galaxies...
- Active galaxy
- Barred spiral galaxy
A barred spiral galaxy is a spiral galaxy with a central bar-shaped structure composed of stars. Bars are found in approximately two-thirds of all spiral galaxies...
- Dwarf galaxy
A dwarf galaxy is a small galaxy composed of up to several billion stars, a small number compared to our own Milky Way's 200-400 billion stars...
- Dwarf elliptical galaxy
Dwarf elliptical galaxies, or dEs, are elliptical galaxies that are much smaller than others. They are classified as dE, and are quite common in galaxy groups and clusters, and are usually companions to other galaxies.- Examples :...
- Dwarf spheroidal galaxy
Dwarf spheroidal galaxy is a term in astronomy applied to low luminosity galaxies that are companions to the Milky Way and to the similar systems that are companions to the Andromeda Galaxy M31...
- 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...
- Grand design spiral galaxy
A grand design spiral galaxy is a type of spiral galaxy with prominent and well-defined spiral arms, as opposed to multi-arm and flocculent spirals which have subtler structural features. The spiral arms of a grand design galaxy extend clearly around the galaxy through many radians and can be...
- Intermediate spiral galaxy
An intermediate spiral galaxy is a galaxy that is in between the classifications of a barred spiral galaxy and an unbarred spiral galaxy. It is designated as SAB in the galaxy morphological classification scheme.-Grades:...
- Irregular galaxy
An irregular galaxy is a galaxy that does not have a distinct regular shape, like a spiral or an elliptical galaxy. The shape of an irregular galaxy is uncommon – they do not fall into any of the regular classes of the Hubble sequence, and they are often chaotic in appearance, with neither a...
- 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...
- Ring galaxy
A ring galaxy is a galaxy with a ring-like appearance. The ring consists of massive, relatively young blue stars, which are extremely bright. The central region contains relatively little luminous matter. Some astronomers believe that ring galaxies are formed when a smaller galaxy passes through...
- Starburst galaxy
A starburst galaxy is a galaxy in the process of an exceptionally high rate of star formation, compared to the usual star formation rate seen in most galaxies. Galaxies are often observed to have a burst of star formation after a collision or close encounter between two galaxies...
- Seyfert galaxy
Seyfert galaxies are a class of galaxies with nuclei that produce spectral line emission from highly ionized gas, named after Carl Keenan Seyfert, the astronomer who first identified the class in 1943...
- Unbarred spiral galaxy
An unbarred spiral galaxy is a type of spiral galaxy without a central bar, or one that is not a barred spiral galaxy. It is designated with an SA in the galaxy morphological classification scheme.The Sombrero Galaxy is an unbarred spiral galaxy....
Other
- Galactic coordinate system
The galactic coordinate system is a celestial coordinate system which is centered on the Sun and is aligned with the apparent center of the Milky Way galaxy. The "equator" is aligned to the galactic plane...
- Galaxy formation and evolution
The study of galaxy formation and evolution is concerned with the processes that formed a heterogeneous universe from a homogeneous beginning, the formation of the first galaxies, the way galaxies change over time, and the processes that have generated the variety of structures observed in nearby...
- Groups and clusters of galaxies
- Timeline of galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and large scale structure
- Tully-Fisher relation
In astronomy, the Tully–Fisher relation, published by astronomers R. Brent Tully and J. Richard Fisher in 1977, is an empirical relationship between the intrinsic luminosity of a spiral galaxy and its velocity width...
External links