26.2 Types of galaxies  (Page 4/7)

4-meter telescope at cerro tololo inter-american observatory silhouetted against the southern sky.

The Small Magellanic Cloud is considerably less massive than the Large Magellanic Cloud, and it is six times longer than it is wide. This narrow wisp of material points directly toward our Galaxy like an arrow. The Small Magellanic Cloud was most likely contorted into its current shape through gravitational interactions with the Milky Way. A large trail of debris from this interaction between the Milky Way and the Small Magellanic Cloud has been strewn across the sky and is seen as a series of gas clouds moving at abnormally high velocity, known as the Magellanic Stream. We will see that this kind of interaction between galaxies will help explain the irregular shapes of this whole category of small galaxies,

Galaxy evolution

Encouraged by the success of the H-R diagram for stars (see Analyzing Starlight ), astronomers studying galaxies hoped to find some sort of comparable scheme, where differences in appearance could be tied to different evolutionary stages in the life of galaxies. Wouldn’t it be nice if every elliptical galaxy evolved into a spiral, for example, just as every main-sequence star evolves into a red giant? Several simple ideas of this kind were tried, some by Hubble himself, but none stood the test of time (and observation).

Because no simple scheme for evolving one type of galaxy into another could be found, astronomers then tended to the opposite point of view. For a while, most astronomers thought that all galaxies formed very early in the history of the universe and that the differences between them had to do with the rate of star formation. Ellipticals were those galaxies in which all the interstellar matter was converted rapidly into stars. Spirals were galaxies in which star formation occurred slowly over the entire lifetime of the galaxy. This idea turned out to be too simple as well.

Today, we understand that at least some galaxies have changed types over the billions of years since the universe began. As we shall see in later chapters, collisions and mergers between galaxies may dramatically change spiral galaxies into elliptical galaxies. Even isolated spirals (with no neighbor galaxies in sight) can change their appearance over time. As they consume their gas, the rate of star formation will slow down, and the spiral arms will gradually become less conspicuous. Over long periods, spirals therefore begin to look more like the galaxies at the middle of [link] (which astronomers refer to as S0 types).

Over the past several decades, the study of how galaxies evolve over the lifetime of the universe has become one of the most active fields of astronomical research. We will discuss the evolution of galaxies in more detail in The Evolution and Distribution of Galaxies , but let’s first see in a little more detail just what different galaxies are like.

Key concepts and summary

The majority of bright galaxies are either spirals or ellipticals. Spiral galaxies contain both old and young stars, as well as interstellar matter, and have typical masses in the range of 10 ⁹ to 10 ¹² M _Sun . Our own Galaxy is a large spiral. Ellipticals are spheroidal or slightly elongated systems that consist almost entirely of old stars, with very little interstellar matter. Elliptical galaxies range in size from giants, more massive than any spiral, down to dwarfs, with masses of only about 10 ⁶ M _Sun . Dwarf ellipticals are probably the most common type of galaxy in the nearby universe. A small percentage of galaxies with more disorganized shapes are classified as irregulars. Galaxies may change their appearance over time due to collisions with other galaxies or by a change in the rate of star formation.