Astronomers Peer at the Galactic Structure to Understand the Evolution of Galaxies

First Posted: Feb 04, 2015 09:58 AM EST
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Scientists have taken a closer look at the evolution and formation of hundreds of nearby galaxies. Now, they're unveiling new scientific images of these galaxies that reveal their internal structure and interaction among one another.

Galaxies are made up of millions of stars. This means that their structures depend on the evolving process in which they have been subjected. This includes interacting with other, nearby galaxies and how they were formed in the first place. Understanding galaxies can actually reveal details on how our universe first formed.

In order to better understand galaxy structure, scientists analyzed almost 3,000 nearby galaxies observed by the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure (S4G), a recent survey conducted by the Spitzer Space Telescope. The scientists combined the infrared images taken by Spitzer with optical images taken from other sources.

The researchers had to overcome some obstacles when studying the images, as well. The presence of a nearby galaxy can distort the morphology of other galaxies due to gravitational phenomena. This means that just looking at a picture isn't enough to determine whether two galaxies are close. That's why the researchers took processed images and then compared them to physical data from the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED).

In the end, the researchers characterized the morphology, composition and interaction among the galaxies. They also found that nearly 17 percent of the observed galaxies are close neighbors and 3 percent show important size of interaction. A total of 32 galaxies also showed evidence of merging with their neighbors.

The findings reveal a bit more about the galaxies in our universe. This could help inform future studies of our universe and the interactions between galaxies.

The findings are published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

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