I have to say though, the Las Cumbres version of the activity looks even more fun as they also talk you through how to make your own colour images of the galaxies to put on the diagram.Īnyway I hope you like my new version of the diagram as much as I do. Inspired by the “ Create a Hubble Tuning Fork Diagram” activity provided by the Las Cumbres Observatory, I also provide below a blank version which you can fill in with your favourite Galaxy Zoo galaxies should you want to. I strongly recommend that article if you’re looking for a thorough history of galaxy morphology. I should say that my choice of galaxies for the sequence owes a lot of credit to an excellent Figure illustrating galaxy morphologies in colour SDSS images which can be found in this article on Galaxy Morphology ( arXiV link) written by Ron Buta from Alabama (Figure 48). The Hubble Tuning Fork as seen in colour by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: At the centre of the Hubble tuning fork, where the two spiral-galaxy branches and the elliptical branch join, lies an intermediate class of galaxies known as. The new scheme is called the Hubbles Tuning Fork Diagram because of its appearance. I have been meaning for a while to make a new version of the Hubble tuning fork based on the type of images which were used in Galaxy Zoo 1 and 2 (OK the prettiest ones I could find – these are not typical at all). In 1926 Edwin Hubble invented a new classification scheme for galaxies. Astronomers call this diagram the “Hubble Tuning Fork”.
Hubble’s classification is often depicted in a diagram – something which is probably familiar to everyone who has taken an introductory astronomy course. A description of the scheme which Hubble calls “a detailed formulation of a preliminary classification presented in an earlier paper” (an observatory circular published in 1922) can be found in his 1926 paper “Extragalactic Nebulae” which is pretty fun to have a look at. With a few minor modifications, this classification has stood in place for almost 90 years. It classifies galaxies based on their apparent structure into three main categories elliptical, spiral and barred spiral. In addition, we will be using the Hubble Tuning Fork Diagram as well as reference material to. Misleading visualization results in misrepresenting of information Hubble’s tuning fork diagram, published in 1936 by US astronomer Edwin Hubble, is the earliest method for classification of galaxies.
#Hubble tuning fork professional#
The gold standard for galaxy classification among professional astronomers is of course the Hubble classification. We will examine in detail the properties of a spiral galaxy.