Related papers: Spiral Galaxies as Chiral Objects?
It is well established that many galaxies, like our Milky Way, exhibit spiral patterns. The entire galactic disc rotates about the galactic centre with different speeds; higher closer to the centre, lower at greater distances - that is,…
Spin patterns of spiral galaxies can be broadly separated into galaxies with clockwise (Z-wise) patterns and galaxies with counterclockwise (S-wise) spin patterns. While the differences between these patterns are visually noticeable, they…
We have obtained HST_NICMOS images for 72 nearby spiral galaxy bulges in the H-band. These data show that galaxies with regular bulges have steeper nuclear cusps than galaxies with irregular bulges. We also show that galaxies with regular…
Galaxies exhibit a sequence of various morphological types, i.e., the Hubble sequence, and they are basically composed of spheroidal components (elliptical galaxies and bulges in spiral galaxies) and disks. It is known that spheroidal…
Disturbed spiral galaxies with high rates of star formation pervaded clusters of galaxies just a few billion years ago, but nearby clusters exclude spirals in favor of ellipticals. ``Galaxy harassment" (frequent high speed galaxy…
Spiral structures are a common feature in scattered-light images of protoplanetary disks, and of great interest as possible tracers of the presence of planets. However, other mechanisms have been put foward to explain them, including…
Whether the spiral structure of galaxies is trailing or leading has been a subject of debate. We present a new spin parity catalog of 146 spiral galaxies that lists the following three pieces of information: whether the spiral structure…
Traditionally globular clusters and dwarf spheroidal galaxies have been distinguished by using one or more of the following criteria: (1) mass, (2) luminosity, (3) size, (4) mass-to-light ratio and (5) spread in metallicity. However, a few…
Based on SDSS data, we have selected a sample of nine edge-on spiral galaxies with bulges whose major axes show a high inclination to the disk plane. Such objects are called polar-bulge galaxies. They are similar in their morphology to…
Accumulation of new data on stellar hierarchical systems and the progress in numerical simulations of their formation open the door to genetic classification of these systems, where properties of a certain group (family) of objects are…
Galaxies are complex systems the evolution of which apparently results from the interplay of dynamics, star formation, chemical enrichment, and feedback from supernova explosions and supermassive black holes. The hierarchical theory of…
We have looked for differences in the galaxy properties along the Hubble sequence and for the dependence of these properties on the environment, in an absolute magnitude complete sample of 187 galaxies in the Coma cluster. The morphological…
Spiral arms are the defining features of broad morphological classes of disc galaxies, but their nature and influence on galaxy evolution is still under debate. A key diagnostic for their nature is the spiral arm pattern speed: the radial…
The analysis of the presence of substructures in 16 well-sampled clusters of galaxies suggests a stimulating hypothesis: Clusters could be classified as unimodal or bimodal, on the basis of to the sub-clump distribution in the {\em 3-D}…
A galaxy's orientation is one of its most basic observable properties. Astronomers once assumed that galaxies are randomly oriented in space, however it is now clear that some have preferred orientations with respect to their surroundings.…
In the past years a wealth of observations has unraveled the structural properties of the Dark and Luminous mass distribution in spirals. These have pointed out to an intriguing scenario not easily explained by present theories of galaxy…
Globular clusters provide a unique probe of galaxy formation and evolution. Here I briefly summarize the known observational properties of globular cluster systems. One re-occurring theme is that the globular cluster systems of spirals and…
Inner regions of barred disk galaxies often include asymmetrical, small-scale central features, some of which are best described as secondary bars. Because orbital timescales in the galaxy center are short, secondary bars are likely to be…
We present optical and millimetric data for 47 intermediate Hubble type spiral galaxies located either in dense environments or in the field. We compare correlations between global parameters, such as far-infrared luminosity, blue…
Large self-gravitating stellar systems share with correlated liquids in condensed matter physics a pattern of hierarchical density variations. While it takes the microscopic time resolution to discern the correlated dynamics of the critical…