[In the above illustration, the left-hand image is Rosse's sketch of the Whirlpool Galaxy; the right-hand image is a bad reproduction of a modern photograph of the same galaxy.]
Most galaxies, though, are very far away, and hence have a low apparent brightness. If you want to see a galaxy without the aid of a telescope, there are four you can choose from:
In the 19th century, Lord Rosse, using what was then the world's
largest telescope, determined that some nebulae were spiral
nebulae; that is, as revealed in Rosse's sketch (below left),
they have a swirling spiral structure.
[In the above illustration, the left-hand image is Rosse's sketch
of the Whirlpool Galaxy; the right-hand image is a bad reproduction
of a modern photograph of the same galaxy.]
The true nature of the spiral nebulae was revealed by Edwin Hubble in the 1920's. Using what was then the world's largest telescope, he discovered Cepheid stars in the Andromeda Nebula. From the period-luminosity relationship, he discovered that the Andromeda Nebula was outside our own galaxy, and was a galaxy in its own right. From the Cepheid period-luminosity relationship, the distance to the Andromeda Galaxy is currently determined to be 700 kpc = 2.3 million light years. (When you look at that faint fuzzy oval in the constellation Andromeda, your eye is detecting photons that have sped through intergalactic space for 2.3 million years before ending their journey by slamming into your retina.)
The first category of galaxies consists of SPIRAL
galaxies. Our own galaxy is a spiral galaxy;
so is the Andromeda Galaxy (M31): 
and the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51): 
Other spiral galaxies
are shown in the Galaxy Gallery.
All spiral galaxies have
A ``subspecies'' of spiral galaxy is the class of barred spirals. In a barred spiral galaxy, the spiral arms wind away from an elongated central bar rather than from a spherical central bulge. A picture is worth a thousand words: look at the examples of barred spiral galaxies in the Galaxy Gallery. Aside from the presence of the central bar of stars, barred spirals are very similar in their properties to ``ordinary'' spirals.
A ``subspecies'' closely related to spiral galaxies is the class lenticular galaxies. Lenticular galaxies have
Elliptical galaxies were given their name because they
appear elliptical on the sky. Elliptical galaxies are
subclassified according to how flattened they appear.
Let ``a'' be the diameter of an elliptical galaxy along
its longest dimension (its major axis, in the language of
mathematicians). Let ``b'' be the diameter along the
shortest dimension. The elliptical galaxy is then given
the label ``En'', where ``n'' is a number given by the
formula:
n = 10(a-b)/a
For instance, a galaxy which appears circular has a=b,
and hence n=0. Galaxies which appear circular are thus
given the label ``E0''. Slightly more flattened galaxies
are labeled ``E1'', and so forth, up to the most flattened
elliptical galaxies, which are called ``E7''. The galaxy
M87 (displayed in the Galaxy Gallery)
is nearly circular, and hence is classified as E0.
Note that the above classification scheme for elliptical galaxies is fairly lame, since it relies on the projected shape of the galaxy not on the true three-dimensional shape. The projected shape of an object depends on the angle from which we view it, which is totally accidental. Unfortunately, it's impossible to determine the true 3-D shape of an elliptical galaxy - we can't, for instance, take a million-parsec-long journey in order to circumnavigate it and view it from every angle.
Since elliptical galaxies appear elliptical in the sky, they must be ellipsoidal in three dimensions. Just as an ellipse is a distorted circle, an ellipsoid is a distorted sphere. There are three types of ellipsoid:
Elliptical galaxies have a very large range of sizes. Both the largest and smallest galaxies in the universe are elliptical. Giant elliptical galaxies contain 1 trillion stars or more. Dwarf ellipticals contains 10 million stars or less. The Galaxy Gallery contains portraits of the giant elliptical galaxy M87 (which is about 200 kiloparsecs in diameter) and the dwarf elliptical galaxy Leo II (which is about 1 kiloparsec in diameter, and contains so few stars you can see right through it). Of the two dozen galaxies closest to us, a dozen are dwarf ellipticals.
The final class of galaxies consists of irregular galaxies. Irregular galaxies tend to contain lots of gas and dust. As a consequence, irregular galaxies contain copious star formation. The star formation is patchy (tending to occur in clusters), as is the distribution of dust. Therefore, irregular galaxies are given their characteristic irregular, patchy, raggedy appearance. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, about 50,000 parsecs away from our own galaxy, are examples of irregular galaxies (You can see their pictures in the Galaxy Gallery.)
The class of irregular galaxies tends to be something of a ``garbage bin'' classification. If a galaxy is extremely bizarre looking, it tends to be labeled as an irregular.
Updated: 2003 Feb 24
Copyright © 2003, Barbara Ryden