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Jai Ganesh

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Registered: 2005-06-28

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Galaxy

Galaxy

Gist

A galaxy is a vast, gravitationally bound system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, contains our solar system and billions of other stars.

Estimates of the number of galaxies in the observable universe range from 100 billion to 2 trillion. The higher number is based on theoretical calculations that account for galaxies that are too faint, small, or distant to be seen with current technology.

The largest known galaxy in the universe is IC 1101, a supergiant elliptical galaxy located at the center of the Abell 2029 galaxy cluster, spanning 5.5 million light-years across.

Summary

Galaxies consist of stars, planets, and vast clouds of gas and dust, all bound together by gravity. The largest contain trillions of stars and can be more than a million light-years across. The smallest can contain a few thousand stars and span just a few hundred light-years. Most large galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers, some with billions of times the Sun’s mass.

Galaxies come in a variety of shapes, mostly spirals and ellipticals, as well as those with less orderly appearances, usually dubbed irregular.

Most galaxies are between 10 billion and 13.6 billion years old. Some are almost as old as the universe itself, which formed around 13.8 billion years ago. Astronomers think the youngest known galaxy formed approximately 500 million years ago.

Galaxies can organize into groups of about 100 or fewer members held together by their mutual gravity. Larger structures, called clusters, may contain thousands of galaxies. Groups and clusters can be arranged in superclusters, which are not gravitationally bound. Superclusters, empty voids, “walls” of galaxies, and other large-scale structures make up the cosmic web of matter in the universe.

Our Milky Way

Our home galaxy is called the Milky Way. It’s a spiral galaxy with a disk of stars spanning more than 100,000 light-years. Earth is located along one of the galaxy’s spiral arms, about halfway from the center. Our solar system takes about 240 million years to orbit the Milky Way just once.

From our perspective on Earth, the Milky Way looks like a faint, milky band of light arcing across the entire sky, which is how it got its name. This feature marks the central disk of our home galaxy seen edge on.

The Milky Way sits in a neighborhood with over 50 other galaxies called the Local Group. Its members range in size from dwarf galaxies (smaller galaxies with up to a few billion stars) to Andromeda, our nearest large galactic neighbor.

The Local Group sits just off the edge of the Virgo cluster and is part of the Laniakea supercluster.

Details

A galaxy is any of the systems of stars and interstellar matter that make up the universe. Many such assemblages are so enormous that they contain hundreds of billions of stars.

Nature has provided an immensely varied array of galaxies, ranging from faint, diffuse dwarf objects to brilliant spiral-shaped giants. Virtually all galaxies appear to have been formed soon after the universe began, and they pervade space, even into the depths of the farthest reaches penetrated by powerful modern telescopes. Galaxies usually exist in clusters, some of which in turn are grouped into larger clusters that measure hundreds of millions of light-years across. (A light-year is the distance traversed by light in one year, traveling at a velocity of 300,000 km per second [km/sec], or 650,000,000 miles per hour.) These so-called superclusters are separated by nearly empty voids, and this causes the gross structure of the universe to look somewhat like a network of sheets and chains of galaxies.

Galaxies differ from one another in shape, with variations resulting from the way in which the systems were formed and subsequently evolved. Galaxies are extremely varied not only in structure but also in the amount of activity observed. Some are the sites of vigorous star formation, with its attendant glowing gas and clouds of dust and molecular complexes. Others, by contrast, are quiescent, having long ago ceased to form new stars. Perhaps the most conspicuous activity in galaxies occurs in their nuclei, where evidence suggests that in many cases supermassive objects—probably black holes—lurk. These central black holes apparently formed several billion years ago; they are now observed forming in galaxies at large distances (and, therefore, because of the time it takes light to travel to Earth, at times in the far distant past) as brilliant objects called quasars.

The existence of galaxies was not recognized until the early 20th century. Since then, however, galaxies have become one of the focal points of astronomical investigation. The notable developments and achievements in the study of galaxies are surveyed here. Included in the discussion are the external galaxies (i.e., those lying outside the Milky Way Galaxy, the local galaxy to which the Sun and Earth belong), their distribution in clusters and superclusters, and the evolution of galaxies and quasars. For further details on the Milky Way Galaxy, see Milky Way Galaxy. For specifics about the components of galaxies, see star and nebula.

Historical survey of the study of galaxies:

Early observations and conceptions

The dispute over the nature of what were once termed spiral nebulae stands as one of the most significant in the development of astronomy. On this dispute hinged the question of the magnitude of the universe: were we confined to a single, limited stellar system that lay embedded alone in empty space, or was our Milky Way Galaxy just one of millions of galaxies that pervaded space, stretching beyond the vast distances probed by our most powerful telescopes? How this question arose, and how it was resolved, is an important element in the development of our prevailing view of the universe.

Up until 1925, spiral nebulae and their related forms had uncertain status. Some scientists, notably Heber D. Curtis of the United States and Knut Lundmark of Sweden, argued that they might be remote aggregates of stars similar in size to the Milky Way Galaxy. Centuries earlier the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, among others, had suggested much the same idea, but that was long before the tools were available to actually measure distances and thus prove it. During the early 1920s astronomers were divided. Although some deduced that spiral nebulae were actually extragalactic star systems, there was evidence that convinced many that such nebulae were local clouds of material, possibly new solar systems in the process of forming.

The problem of the Magellanic Clouds

It is now known that the nearest external galaxies are the Magellanic Clouds, two patchy irregular objects visible in the skies of the Southern Hemisphere. For years, most experts who regarded the Magellanic Clouds as portions of the Milky Way Galaxy system separated from the main stream could not study them because of their position. (Both Magellanic Clouds are too far south to be seen from most northern latitudes.) Moreover, the irregular shapes of the objects and their numerous hot blue stars, star clusters, and gas clouds did indeed make them resemble the southern Milky Way Galaxy.

The American astronomer Harlow Shapley, noted for his far-reaching work on the size and structure of the Milky Way Galaxy, was one of the first to appreciate the importance of the Magellanic Clouds in terms of the nature of spiral nebulae. To gauge the distance of the Clouds, he made use of the period-luminosity (P-L) relation discovered by Henrietta Leavitt of the Harvard College Observatory. In 1912 Leavitt had found that there was a close correlation between the periods of pulsation (variations in light) and the luminosities (intrinsic, or absolute, brightnesses) of a class of stars called Cepheid variables in the Small Magellanic Cloud. Leavitt’s discovery, however, was of little practical value until Shapley worked out a calibration of the absolute brightnesses of pulsating stars closely analogous to the Cepheids, the so-called RR Lyrae variables. With this quantified form of the P-L relation, he was able to calculate the distances to the Magellanic Clouds, determining that they were about 75,000 light-years from Earth. The significance of the Clouds, however, continued to elude scientists of the time. For them, these objects still seemed to be anomalous, irregular patches of the Milky Way Galaxy, farther away than initially thought but not sufficient to settle the question of the nature of the universe.

Novae in the Andromeda Nebula

An unfortunate misidentification hampered the early recognition of the northern sky’s brightest nearby galaxy, the Andromeda Nebula, also known as M31. In 1885 a bright star, previously invisible, appeared near the centre of M31, becoming almost bright enough to be seen without a telescope. As it slowly faded again, astronomers decided that it must be a nova, a “new star,” similar to the class of temporary stars found relatively frequently in populous parts of the Milky Way Galaxy. If this was the case, it was argued, then its extraordinary brightness must indicate that M31 cannot be very far away, certainly not outside the local system of stars. Designated S Andromeda in conformity with the pattern of terminology applied to stars of variable brightness, this supposed nova was a strong argument in favour of the hypothesis that nebulae are nearby objects in the Milky Way Galaxy.

By 1910, however, there was evidence that S Andromeda might have been wrongly identified. Deep photographs were being taken of M31 with the Mount Wilson Observatory’s newly completed 152-cm (60-inch) telescope, and the astronomers at the observatory, especially J.C. Duncan and George W. Ritchey, were finding faint objects, just resolved by the longest exposures, that also seemed to behave like novae. These objects, however, were about 10,000 times fainter than S Andromeda. If they were ordinary novae, then M31 must be millions of light-years away, but then the nature of S Andromeda became a difficult question. At this vast distance its total luminosity would have to be immense—an incomprehensible output of energy for a single star.

Completion of the 254-cm (100-inch) telescope on Mount Wilson in 1917 resulted in a new series of photographs that captured even fainter objects. More novae were found in M31, mainly by Milton L. Humason, who was an assistant at the time to Edwin P. Hubble, one of the truly outstanding astronomers of the day. Hubble eventually studied 63 of these stars, and his findings proved to be one of the final solutions to the controversy.

The scale of the Milky Way Galaxy

At the same time that spiral nebulae were being studied and debated, the Milky Way Galaxy became the subject of contentious discussion. During the early years of the 20th century, most astronomers believed that the Milky Way Galaxy was a disk-shaped system of stars with the Sun near the centre and with the edge along a thick axis only about 15,000 light-years away. This view was based on statistical evidence involving star counts and the spatial distribution of a variety of cosmic objects—open star clusters, variable stars, binary systems, and clouds of interstellar gas. All these objects seemed to thin out at distances of several thousand light-years.

This conception of the Milky Way Galaxy was challenged by Shapley in 1917, when he released the findings of his study of globular clusters. He had found that these spherically symmetrical groups of densely packed stars, as compared with the much closer open clusters, were unusual in their distribution. While the known open clusters are concentrated heavily in the bright belt of the Milky Way Galaxy, the globular clusters are for the most part absent from those areas except in the general direction of the constellation Sagittarius, where there is a concentration of faint globular clusters. Shapley’s plot of the spatial distribution of these stellar groupings clarified this peculiar fact: the centre of the globular cluster system—a huge almost spherical cloud of clusters—lies in that direction, some 30,000 light-years from the Sun. Shapley assumed that this centre must also be the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy. The globular clusters, he argued, form a giant skeleton around the disk of the Milky Way Galaxy, and the system is thus immensely larger than was previously thought, its total extent measuring nearly 100,000 light-years.

Shapley succeeded in making the first reliable determination of the size of the Milky Way Galaxy largely by using Cepheids and RR Lyrae stars as distance indicators. His approach was based on the P-L relation discovered by Leavitt and on the assumption that all these variables have the same P-L relation. As he saw it, this assumption was most likely true in the case of the RR Lyrae stars, because all variables of this type in any given globular cluster have the same apparent brightness. If all RR Lyrae variables have the same intrinsic brightness, then it follows that differences in apparent brightness must be due to different distances from Earth. The final step in developing a procedure for determining the distances of variables was to calculate the distances of a handful of such stars by an independent method so as to enable calibration. Shapley could not make use of the trigonometric parallax method, since there are no variables close enough for direct distance measurement. However, he had recourse to a technique devised by the Danish astronomer Ejnar Hertzsprung that could determine distances to certain nearby field variables (i.e., those not associated with any particular cluster) by using measurements of their proper motions and the radial velocity of the Sun. Accurate measurements of the proper motions of the variables based on long-term observations were available, and the Sun’s radial velocity could be readily determined spectroscopically. Thus, by availing himself of this body of data and adopting Hertzsprung’s method, Shapley was able to obtain a distance scale for Cepheids in the solar neighbourhood.

Shapley applied the zero point of the Cepheid distance scale to the globular clusters he had studied with the 152-cm (60-inch) telescope at Mount Wilson. Some of these clusters contained RR Lyrae variables, and for these Shapley could calculate distances in a straightforward manner from the P-L relation. For other globular clusters he made distance determinations, using a relationship that he discovered between the brightnesses of the RR Lyrae stars and the brightness of the brightest red stars. For still others he made use of apparent diameters, which he found to be relatively uniform for clusters of known distance. The final result was a catalog of distances for 69 globular clusters, from which Shapley deduced his revolutionary model of the Milky Way Galaxy—one that not only significantly extended the limits of the galactic system but that also displaced the Sun from its centre to a location nearer its edge.

Shapley’s work caused astronomers to ask themselves certain questions: How could the existing stellar data be so wrong? Why couldn’t they see something in Sagittarius, the proposed galactic centre, 30,000 light-years away? The reason for the incorrectness of the star count methods was not learned until 1930, when Lick Observatory astronomer Robert J. Trumpler, while studying open clusters, discovered that interstellar dust pervades the plane of the Milky Way Galaxy and obscures objects beyond only a few thousand light-years. This dust thus renders the centre of the system invisible optically and makes it appear that globular clusters and spiral nebulae avoid the band of the Milky Way.

Shapley’s belief in the tremendous size of the local galactic system helped to put him on the wrong side of the argument about other galaxies. He thought that, if the Milky Way Galaxy was so immense, then the spiral nebulae must lie within it. His conviction was reinforced by two lines of evidence. One of these has already been mentioned—the nova S Andromeda was so bright as to suggest that the Andromeda Nebula most certainly was only a few hundred light-years away. The second came about because of a very curious error made by one of Shapley’s colleagues at Mount Wilson Observatory, Adrian van Maanen.

The van Maanen rotation

During the early 20th century, one of the most important branches of astronomy was astrometry, the precise measurements of stellar positions and motions. Van Maanen was one of the leading experts in this field. Most of his determinations of stellar positions were accurate and have stood the test of time, but he made one serious and still poorly understood error when he pursued a problem tangential to his main interests. In a series of papers published in the early 1920s, van Maanen reported on his discovery and measurement of the rotation of spiral nebulae. Using early plates taken by others at the 152-cm (60-inch) Mount Wilson telescope as well as more recent ones taken about 10 years later, van Maanen measured the positions of several knotlike, nearly stellar images in the spiral arms of some of the largest-known spiral nebulae (e.g., M33, M101, and M51). Comparing the positions, he found distinct changes indicative of a rotation of the spiral pattern against the background of surrounding field stars. In each case, the rotation occurs in the sense that the spiral arms trail. The periods of rotation were all approximately 100,000 years. Angular motions were about 0.02 second of arc per year.

Shapley seized the van Maanen results as evidence that the spirals had to be nearby; otherwise, their true space velocities of rotation would have to be impossibly large. For example, if M51 is rotating at an apparent rate of 0.02 second of arc per year, its true velocity would be immense if it is a distant galaxy. Assuming that a distance of 10,000,000 light-years would lead to an implausibly large rotation velocity of 12,000 km/sec, Shapley argued that, if a more reasonable velocity was adopted—say, 100 km/sec—then the distances would all be less than 100,000 light-years, which would put all the spirals well within the Milky Way Galaxy.

It is unclear just why such a crucial measurement went wrong. Van Maanen repeated the measures and obtained the same answer even after Hubble demonstrated the truth about the distances to the spirals. However, subsequent workers, using the same plates, failed to find any rotation. Among the various hypotheses that science historians have proposed as an explanation for the error are two particularly reasonable ideas: (1) possibly the fact that spiral nebulae look like they are rotating (i.e., they resemble familiar rotational patterns that are perceivable in nature) may have influenced the observer subconsciously, and this subtle effect manifested itself in prejudicing the delicate measurements, or (2) possibly the first set of plates was the problem. Many of these plates had been taken in an unconventional manner by Ritchey, who swung the plate holder out of the field whenever the quality of the images was temporarily poor because of atmospheric turbulence. The resulting plates appeared excellent, having been exposed only during times of very fine seeing; however, according to some interpretations, the images had a slight asymmetry that led to a very small displacement of star images compared with nonstellar images. Such an error could look like rotation if not recognized for what it really was. In any case, the van Maanen rotation was accepted by many astronomers, including Shapley, and temporarily sidetracked progress toward recognizing the truth about galaxies.

The Shapley-Curtis debate

The nature of galaxies and scale of the universe were the subject of the Great Debate, a public program arranged in 1920 by the National Academy of Sciences at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Featured were talks by Shapley and the aforementioned Heber Curtis, who were recognized as spokesmen for opposite views on the nature of spiral nebulae and the Milky Way Galaxy. This so-called debate has often been cited as an illustration of how revolutionary new concepts are assimilated by science. It is sometimes compared to the debate, centuries before, over the motions of the Earth (the Copernican revolution); however, though as a focal point the debate about Earth’s motion can be used to define the modern controversy, the Shapley-Curtis debate actually was much more complicated.

A careful reading of the documents involved suggests that, on the broader topic of the scale of the universe, both men were making incorrect conclusions but for the same reasons—namely, for being unable to accept and comprehend the incredibly large scale of things. Shapley correctly argued for an enormous Milky Way Galaxy on the basis of the P-L relation and the globular clusters, while Curtis incorrectly rejected these lines of evidence, advocating instead a small galactic system. Given a Milky Way Galaxy system of limited scale, Curtis could argue for and consider plausible the extragalactic nature of the spiral nebulae. Shapley, on the other hand, incorrectly rejected the island universe theory of the spirals (i.e., the hypothesis that there existed comparable galaxies beyond the boundaries of the Milky Way Galaxy) because he felt that such objects would surely be engulfed by the local galactic system. Furthermore, he put aside the apparent faint novae in M31, preferring to interpret S Andromeda as an ordinary nova, for otherwise that object would have been unbelievably luminous. Unfortunately for him, such phenomena—called supernovae—do in fact exist, as was realized a few years later. Curtis was willing to concede that there might be two classes of novae, yet, because he considered the Milky Way Galaxy to be small, he underestimated their differences. The van Maanen rotation also entered into Shapley’s arguments: if spiral nebulae were rotating so fast, they must be within the Milky Way Galaxy as he conceived it. For Curtis, however, the matter provided less of a problem: even if spiral nebulae did rotate as rapidly as claimed, the small scale of Curtis’s universe allowed them to have physically reasonable speeds.

The Shapley-Curtis debate took place near the end of the era of the single-galaxy universe. In just a few years the scientific world became convinced that Shapley’s grand scale of the Milky Way Galaxy was correct and at the same time that Curtis was right about the nature of spiral nebulae. Such objects indeed lie even outside Shapley’s enormous Milky Way Galaxy, and they range far beyond the distances that in 1920 seemed too vast for many astronomers to comprehend.

Hubble’s discovery of extragalactic objects

NGC 6822Nearby irregular galaxy NGC 6822, located 1.6 million light-years from Earth, as seen in an optical image taken by the Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.
During the early 1920s Hubble detected 15 stars in the small, irregular cloudlike object NGC 6822 that varied in luminosity, and he suspected that they might include Cepheids. After considerable effort, he determined that 11 of them were in fact Cepheid variables, with properties indistinguishable from those of normal Cepheids in the Milky Way Galaxy and in the Magellanic Clouds. Their periods ranged from 12 to 64 days, and they were all very faint, much fainter than their Magellanic counterparts. Nevertheless, they fit a P-L relation of the same nature as had been discovered by Leavitt.

Hubble then boldly assumed that the P-L relation was universal and derived an estimate for the distance to NGC 6822, using Shapley’s most recent (1925) version of the calibration of the relation. This calibration was wrong, as is now known, because of the confusion at that time over the nature of Cepheids. Shapley’s calibration included certain Cepheids in globular clusters that subsequent investigators found to have their own fainter P-L relation. (Such Cepheids have been designated Type II Cepheids to distinguish them from the normal variety, which are referred to as Type I.) Thus, Hubble’s distance for NGC 6822 was too small: he calculated a distance of only 700,000 light-years. Today it is recognized that the actual distance is closer to 2,000,000 light-years. In any case, this vast distance—even though underestimated—was large enough to convince Hubble that NGC 6822 must be a remote, separate galaxy, much too far away to be included even in Shapley’s version of the Milky Way Galaxy system. Technically, then, this faint nebula can be considered the first recognized external galaxy. The Magellanic Clouds continued to be regarded simply as appendages to the Milky Way Galaxy, and the other bright nebulae, M31 and M33, were still being studied at the Mount Wilson Observatory. Although Hubble announced his discovery of Cepheids in M31 at a meeting in 1924, he did not complete his research and publish the results for this conspicuous spiral galaxy until five years later.

While the Cepheids made it possible to determine the distance and nature of NGC 6822, some of its other features corroborated the conclusion that it was a separate, distant galaxy. Hubble discovered within it five diffuse nebulae, which are glowing gaseous clouds composed mostly of ionized hydrogen, designated H II regions. (H stands for hydrogen and II indicates that most of it is ionized; H I, by contrast, signifies neutral hydrogen.) He found that these five H II regions had spectra like those of gas clouds in the Milky Way Galaxy system—e.g., the Orion Nebula and Eta Carinae. Calculating their diameters, Hubble ascertained that the sizes of the diffuse nebulae were normal, similar to those of local examples of giant H II regions.

Five other diffuse objects discerned by Hubble were definitely not gaseous nebulae. He compared them with globular clusters (both in the Milky Way Galaxy and in the Magellanic Clouds) and concluded that they were too small and faint to be normal globular clusters. Convinced that they were most likely distant galaxies seen through NGC 6822, he dismissed them from further consideration. Modern studies suggest that Hubble was too hasty. Though probably not true giant globular clusters, these objects are in all likelihood star clusters in the system, fainter, smaller in population, and probably somewhat younger than normal globular clusters.

The Dutch astronomer Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn showed in the early 20th century that statistical techniques could be used to determine the stellar luminosity function for the solar neighbourhood. (The luminosity function is a curve that shows how many stars there are in a given volume for each different stellar luminosity.) Eager to test the nature of NGC 6822, Hubble counted stars in the galaxy to various brightness limits and found a luminosity function for its brightest stars. When he compared it with Kapteyn’s, the agreement was excellent—another indication that the Cepheids had given about the right distance and that the basic properties of galaxies were fairly uniform. Step by step, Hubble and his contemporaries piled up evidence for the fundamental assumption that has since guided the astronomy of the extragalactic universe, the uniformity of nature. By its bold application, astronomers have moved from a limiting one-galaxy universe to an immense vastness of space populated by billions of galaxies, all grander in size and design than the Milky Way Galaxy system was once thought to be.

The distance to the Andromeda Nebula

In 1929 Hubble published his epochal paper on M31, the great Andromeda Nebula. Based on 350 photographic plates taken at Mount Wilson, his study provided evidence that M31 is a giant stellar system like the Milky Way Galaxy.

Because M31 is much larger than the field of view of the 152- and 254-cm (60- and 100-inch) telescopes at Mount Wilson, Hubble concentrated on four regions, centred on the nucleus and at various distances along the major axis. The total area studied amounted to less than half the galaxy’s size, and the other unexplored regions remained largely unknown for 50 years. (Modern comprehensive optical studies of M31 have been conducted only since about 1980.)

Hubble pointed out an important and puzzling feature of the resolvability of M31. Its central regions, including the nucleus and diffuse nuclear bulge, were not well resolved into stars, one reason that the true nature of M31 had previously been elusive. However, the outer parts along the spiral arms in particular were resolved into swarms of faint stars, seen superimposed over a structured background of light. Current understanding of this fact is that spiral galaxies typically have central bulges made up exclusively of very old stars, the brightest of which are too faint to be visible on Hubble’s plates. Not until 1944 did the German-born astronomer Walter Baade finally resolve the bulge of M31. Using red-sensitive plates and very long exposures, he managed to detect the brightest red giants of this old population. Out in the arms there exist many young, bright, hot blue stars, and these are easily resolved. The brightest are so luminous that they can be seen even with moderate-sized telescopes.

The most important of Hubble’s discoveries was that of M31’s population of Cepheid variables. Forty of the 50 variables detected turned out to be ordinary Cepheids with periods ranging from 10 to 48 days. A clear relation was found between their periods and luminosities, and the slope of the relation agreed with those for the Magellanic Clouds and NGC 6822. Hubble’s comparison indicated that M31 must be 8.5 times more distant than the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), which would imply a distance of two million light-years if the modern SMC distance was used (the 1929 value employed by Hubble was about two times too small). Clearly, M31 must be a distant, large galaxy.

Other features announced in Hubble’s paper were M31’s population of bright, irregular, slowly varying variables. One of the irregulars was exceedingly bright; it is among the most luminous stars in the galaxy and is a prototype of a class of high-luminosity stars now called Hubble-Sandage variables, which are found in many giant galaxies. Eighty-five novae, all behaving very much like those in the Milky Way Galaxy, were also analyzed. Hubble estimated that the true occurrence rate of novae in M31 must be about 30 per year, a figure that was later confirmed by the American astronomer Halton C. Arp in a systematic search.

Hubble found numerous star clusters in M31, especially globular clusters, 140 of which he eventually cataloged. He clinched the argument that M31 was a galaxy similar to the Milky Way Galaxy by calculating its mass and mass density. Using the velocities that had been measured for the inner parts of M31 by spectrographic work, he calculated (on the basis of the distance derived from the Cepheids) that M31’s mass must be about 3.5 billion times that of the Sun. Today astronomers have much better data, which indicate that the galaxy’s true total mass must be at least 100 times greater than Hubble’s value, but even that value clearly showed that M31 is an immense system of stars. Furthermore, Hubble’s estimates of star densities demonstrated that the stars in the outer arm areas of M31 are spread out with about the same density as in the Milky Way Galaxy system in the vicinity of the Sun.

The golden age of extragalactic astronomy

Until about 1950, scientific knowledge of galaxies advanced slowly. Only a very small number of astronomers took up galaxy studies, and only a very few telescopes were suitable for significant research. It was an exclusive field, rather jealously guarded by its practitioners, and so progress was orderly but limited.

During the decade of the 1950s, the field began to change. Ever-larger optical telescopes became available, and the space program resulted in a sizable increase in the number of astronomers emerging from universities. New instrumentation enabled investigators to explore galaxies in entirely new ways, making it possible to detect their radio, infrared, and ultraviolet emissions and eventually even radiation at X-ray and gamma-ray wavelengths. Whereas in the 1950s there was only one telescope larger than 254 cm (100 inches)—and only about 10 astronomers conducting research on galaxies worldwide—by the year 2000 the number of large telescopes had grown immensely, with 12 telescopes larger than 800 cm (300 inches), and the number of scientists devoted to galaxy study was in the thousands. By then, galaxies were being extensively studied with giant arrays of ground-based radio telescopes, Earth-orbiting optical, X-ray, ultraviolet, and infrared telescopes, and high-speed computers—studies that have given rise to remarkable advances in knowledge and understanding. The tremendous progress in both theoretical and observational work has led many to say that the turn of the 21st century happened during the “golden age” of extragalactic astronomy.

Additional Information

A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek galaxias, literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar System. Galaxies, averaging an estimated 100 million stars, range in size from dwarfs with less than a thousand stars, to the largest galaxies known – supergiants with one hundred trillion stars, each orbiting its galaxy's centre of mass. Most of the mass in a typical galaxy is in the form of dark matter, with only a few per cent of that mass visible in the form of stars and nebulae. Supermassive black holes are a common feature at the centres of galaxies.

Galaxies are categorised according to their visual morphology as elliptical, spiral, or irregular. The Milky Way is an example of a spiral galaxy. It is estimated that there are between 200 billion (2 × {10}^{11)) to 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. Most galaxies are 1,000 to 100,000 parsecs in diameter (approximately 3,000 to 300,000 light years) and are separated by distances in the order of millions of parsecs (or megaparsecs). For comparison, the Milky Way has a diameter of at least 26,800 parsecs (87,400 ly) and is separated from the Andromeda Galaxy, its nearest large neighbour, by just over 750,000 parsecs (2.5 million ly).

The space between galaxies is filled with a tenuous gas (the intergalactic medium) with an average density of less than one atom per cubic metre. Most galaxies are gravitationally organised into groups, clusters and superclusters. The Milky Way is part of the Local Group, which it dominates along with the Andromeda Galaxy. The group is part of the Virgo Supercluster. At the largest scale, these associations are generally arranged into sheets and filaments surrounded by immense voids. Both the Local Group and the Virgo Supercluster are contained in a much larger cosmic structure named Laniakea.

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