Spiral galaxies form a class of galaxy originally described by

Edwin Hubble Edwin Powell Hubble (November 20, 1889 – September 28, 1953) was an American astronomer. He played a crucial role in establishing the fields of extragalactic astronomy and observational cosmology. Hubble proved that many objects previousl ...

in his 1936 work ''The Realm of the Nebulae''Alt URL
pp. 124–151) and, as such, form part of the

Hubble sequence The Hubble sequence is a morphological classification scheme for galaxies invented by Edwin Hubble in 1926. It is often colloquially known as the Hubble tuning-fork diagram because the shape in which it is traditionally represented resembles a tun ...

. Most spiral galaxies consist of a flat, rotating disk containing

star A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked ...

s, gas and dust, and a central concentration of stars known as the

bulge __NOTOC__ Bulge may refer to: Astronomy and geography *Bulge (astronomy), a tightly packed group of stars at the center of a spiral galaxy *Equatorial bulge, a bulge around the equator of a planet due to rotation *Tharsis bulge, vast volcanic pla ...

. These are often surrounded by a much fainter

halo Halo, halos or haloes usually refer to: * Halo (optical phenomenon) * Halo (religious iconography), a ring of light around the image of a head HALO, halo, halos or haloes may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Video games * ''Halo'' (franch ...

of stars, many of which reside in

globular cluster A globular cluster is a spheroidal conglomeration of stars. Globular clusters are bound together by gravity, with a higher concentration of stars towards their centers. They can contain anywhere from tens of thousands to many millions of membe ...

s. Spiral galaxies are named by their spiral structures that extend from the center into the galactic disc. The spiral arms are sites of ongoing star formation and are brighter than the surrounding disc because of the young, hot OB stars that inhabit them. Roughly two-thirds of all spirals are observed to have an additional component in the form of a bar-like structure, extending from the central bulge, at the ends of which the spiral arms begin. The proportion of barred spirals relative to barless spirals has likely changed over the history of the

universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the univers ...

, with only about 10% containing bars about 8 billion years ago, to roughly a quarter 2.5 billion years ago, until present, where over two-thirds of the

galaxies A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, dark matter, bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar System ...

in the visible universe ( Hubble volume) have bars. The

Milky Way The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. ...

is a barred spiral, although the bar itself is difficult to observe from Earth's current position within the galactic disc. The most convincing evidence for the stars forming a bar in the galactic center comes from several recent surveys, including the

Spitzer Space Telescope The Spitzer Space Telescope, formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), was an infrared space telescope launched in 2003. Operations ended on 30 January 2020. Spitzer was the third space telescope dedicated to infrared astronomy, ...

. Together with

irregular galaxies An irregular galaxy is a galaxy that does not have a distinct regular shape, unlike a spiral or an elliptical galaxy. Irregular galaxies do not fall into any of the regular classes of the Hubble sequence, and they are often chaotic in appearance, ...

, spiral galaxies make up approximately 60% of galaxies in today's universe. They are mostly found in low-density regions and are rare in the centers of galaxy clusters.

Structure

Spiral galaxies may consist of several distinct components: * A flat, rotating disc of

s and interstellar matter of which spiral arms are prominent components * A central stellar

of mainly older stars, which resembles an

elliptical galaxy An elliptical galaxy is a type of galaxy with an approximately ellipsoidal shape and a smooth, nearly featureless image. They are one of the four main classes of galaxy described by Edwin Hubble in his Hubble sequence and 1936 work ''The Real ...

* A bar-shaped distribution of stars * A near-spherical

of stars, including many in

s * A

supermassive black hole A supermassive black hole (SMBH or sometimes SBH) is the largest type of black hole, with its mass being on the order of hundreds of thousands, or millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun (). Black holes are a class of astronomical ob ...

at the very center of the central bulge * A near-spherical

dark matter Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe. Dark matter is called "dark" because it does not appear to interact with the electromagnetic field, which means it does not ...

halo The relative importance, in terms of mass, brightness and size, of the different components varies from galaxy to galaxy.

Spiral arms

''Spiral arms'' are regions of

s that extend from the center of barred and unbarred spiral

. These long, thin regions resemble a

spiral In mathematics, a spiral is a curve which emanates from a point, moving farther away as it revolves around the point. Helices Two major definitions of "spiral" in the American Heritage Dictionary are:classifications of spiral galaxies have distinct arm-structures. Sc and SBc galaxies, for instance, have very "loose" arms, whereas Sa and SBa galaxies have tightly wrapped arms (with reference to the Hubble sequence). Either way, spiral arms contain many young, blue stars (due to the high mass density and the high rate of star formation), which make the arms so bright.

Bulge

A ''bulge'' is a large, tightly packed group of

s. The term refers to the central group of stars found in most spiral galaxies, often defined as the excess of stellar light above the inward extrapolation of the outer (exponential) disk light. HAWK-I NGC 1300

Using the Hubble classification, the bulge of Sa galaxies is usually composed of Population II stars, which are old, red stars with low metal content. Further, the bulge of Sa and SBa galaxies tends to be large. In contrast, the bulges of Sc and SBc galaxies are much smaller and are composed of young, blue Population I stars. Some bulges have similar properties to those of elliptical galaxies (scaled down to lower mass and luminosity); others simply appear as higher density centers of disks, with properties similar to disk galaxies. Many bulges are thought to host a

at their centers. In our own galaxy, for instance, the object called

Sagittarius A* Sagittarius A* ( ), abbreviated Sgr A* ( ), is the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Center of the Milky Way. It is located near the border of the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpius, about 5.6° south of the ecliptic, ...

is believed to be a supermassive black hole. There are many lines of evidence for the existence of black holes in spiral galaxy centers, including the presence of active nuclei in some spiral galaxies, and dynamical measurements that find large compact central masses in galaxies such as Messier 106.

Bar

Bar-shaped elongations of stars are observed in roughly two-thirds of all spiral galaxies. Their presence may be either strong or weak. In edge-on spiral (and lenticular) galaxies, the presence of the bar can sometimes be discerned by the out-of-plane X-shaped or (peanut shell)-shaped structures which typically have a maximum visibility at half the length of the in-plane bar.

Spheroid

The bulk of the stars in a spiral galaxy are located either close to a single plane (the

galactic plane The galactic plane is the plane on which the majority of a disk-shaped galaxy's mass lies. The directions perpendicular to the galactic plane point to the galactic poles. In actual usage, the terms ''galactic plane'' and ''galactic poles'' usual ...

) in more or less conventional circular

orbit In celestial mechanics, an orbit is the curved trajectory of an object such as the trajectory of a planet around a star, or of a natural satellite around a planet, or of an artificial satellite around an object or position in space such as ...

s around the center of the galaxy (the

Galactic Center The Galactic Center or Galactic Centre is the rotational center, the barycenter, of the Milky Way galaxy. Its central massive object is a supermassive black hole of about 4 million solar masses, which is called Sagittarius A*, a compact ra ...

), or in a

spheroid A spheroid, also known as an ellipsoid of revolution or rotational ellipsoid, is a quadric surface obtained by rotating an ellipse about one of its principal axes; in other words, an ellipsoid with two equal semi-diameters. A spheroid has ...

al galactic bulge around the galactic core. However, some stars inhabit a ''spheroidal halo'' or ''galactic spheroid'', a type of

galactic halo A galactic halo is an extended, roughly spherical component of a galaxy which extends beyond the main, visible component. Several distinct components of galaxies comprise the halo: * the stellar halo * the galactic corona (hot gas, i.e. a plas ...

. The orbital behaviour of these stars is disputed, but they may exhibit retrograde and/or highly

inclined Incline, inclined, inclining, or inclination may refer to: *Grade (slope), the tilt, steepness, or angle from horizontal of a topographic feature (hillside, meadow, etc.) or constructed element (road, railway, field, etc.) *Slope, the tilt, steepn ...

orbits, or not move in regular orbits at all. Halo stars may be acquired from small galaxies which fall into and merge with the spiral galaxy—for example, the

Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy The Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy (Sgr dSph), also known as the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy (Sgr dE or Sag DEG), is an elliptical loop-shaped satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. It contains four globular clusters in ...

is in the process of merging with the Milky Way and observations show that some stars in the halo of the Milky Way have been acquired from it. A mess of stars

Unlike the galactic disc, the halo seems to be free of

dust Dust is made of fine particles of solid matter. On Earth, it generally consists of particles in the atmosphere that come from various sources such as soil lifted by wind (an aeolian process), volcanic eruptions, and pollution. Dust in ...

, and in further contrast, stars in the galactic halo are of Population II, much older and with much lower

metallicity In astronomy, metallicity is the abundance of elements present in an object that are heavier than hydrogen and helium. Most of the normal physical matter in the Universe is either hydrogen or helium, and astronomers use the word ''"metals"'' as ...

than their Population I cousins in the galactic disc (but similar to those in the galactic bulge). The galactic halo also contains many

s. The motion of halo stars does bring them through the disc on occasion, and a number of small

red dwarf ''Red Dwarf'' is a British science fiction comedy franchise created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, which primarily consists of a television sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999, and on Dave since 2009, gaining a cult following. ...

s close to the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

are thought to belong to the galactic halo, for example

Kapteyn's Star Kapteyn's Star is a class M1 red subdwarf about 12.83 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation Pictor; it is the closest halo star to the Solar System. With a magnitude of nearly 9 it is visible through binoculars or a ...

and Groombridge 1830. Due to their irregular movement around the center of the galaxy, these stars often display unusually high

proper motion Proper motion is the astrometric measure of the observed changes in the apparent places of stars or other celestial objects in the sky, as seen from the center of mass of the Solar System, compared to the abstract background of the more distan ...

Oldest spiral galaxy

The oldest spiral galaxy on file is

BX442 BX442 (Q2343-BX442) is a grand design spiral galaxy of type Sc. It has a companion dwarf galaxy. It is the most distant known grand design spiral galaxy in the universe, with a redshift of z=2.1765 ± 0.0001. Although commonly referred to as th ...

. At eleven billion years old, it is more than two billion years older than any previous discovery. Researchers think the galaxy's shape is caused by the gravitational influence of a companion

dwarf galaxy A dwarf galaxy is a small galaxy composed of about 1000 up to several billion stars, as compared to the Milky Way's 200–400 billion stars. The Large Magellanic Cloud, which closely orbits the Milky Way and contains over 30 billion stars, is so ...

. Computer models based on that assumption indicate that BX442's spiral structure will last about 100 million years.

In June 2019, citizen scientists through

Galaxy Zoo Galaxy Zoo is a crowdsourced astronomy project which invites people to assist in the morphological classification of large numbers of galaxies. It is an example of citizen science as it enlists the help of members of the public to help in scie ...

reported that the usual Hubble classification, particularly concerning spiral galaxies, may not be supported, and may need updating.

Origin of the spiral structure

The pioneer of studies of the rotation of the Galaxy and the formation of the spiral arms was Bertil Lindblad in 1925. He realized that the idea of stars arranged permanently in a spiral shape was untenable. Since the angular speed of rotation of the galactic disk varies with distance from the centre of the galaxy (via a standard solar system type of gravitational model), a radial arm (like a spoke) would quickly become curved as the galaxy rotates. The arm would, after a few galactic rotations, become increasingly curved and wind around the galaxy ever tighter. This is called the ''winding problem''. Measurements in the late 1960s showed that the orbital velocity of stars in spiral galaxies with respect to their distance from the galactic center is indeed higher than expected from Newtonian dynamics but still cannot explain the stability of the spiral structure. Since the 1970s, there have been two leading hypotheses or models for the spiral structures of galaxies: * star formation caused by density waves in the galactic disk of the galaxy. * the stochastic self-propagating star formation model ( SSPSF model) – star formation caused by shock waves in the

interstellar medium In astronomy, the interstellar medium is the matter and radiation that exist in the space between the star systems in a galaxy. This matter includes gas in ionic, atomic, and molecular form, as well as dust and cosmic rays. It fills interstella ...

. The shock waves are caused by the stellar winds and supernovae from recent previous star formation, leading to self-propagating and self-sustaining star formation. Spiral structure then arises from differential rotation of the galaxy's disk. These different hypotheses are not mutually exclusive, as they may explain different types of spiral arms.

Density wave model

Bertil Lindblad proposed that the arms represent regions of enhanced density (density waves) that rotate more slowly than the galaxy's stars and gas. As gas enters a density wave, it gets squeezed and makes new stars, some of which are short-lived blue stars that light the arms.

Historical theory of Lin and Shu

The first acceptable theory for the spiral structure was devised by C. C. Lin and

Frank Shu Frank Hsia-San Shu (; born June 2, 1943), is a Chinese-American astrophysicist, astronomer and author. He is currently a University Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley and University of California, San Diego. He is be ...

in 1964, attempting to explain the large-scale structure of spirals in terms of a small-amplitude wave propagating with fixed angular velocity, that revolves around the galaxy at a speed different from that of the galaxy's gas and stars. They suggested that the spiral arms were manifestations of spiral density waves – they assumed that the stars travel in slightly elliptical orbits, and that the orientations of their orbits is correlated i.e. the ellipses vary in their orientation (one to another) in a smooth way with increasing distance from the galactic center. This is illustrated in the diagram to the right. It is clear that the elliptical orbits come close together in certain areas to give the effect of arms. Stars therefore do not remain forever in the position that we now see them in, but pass through the arms as they travel in their orbits..

Star formation caused by density waves

The following hypotheses exist for star formation caused by density waves: * As gas clouds move into the density wave, the local mass density increases. Since the criteria for cloud collapse (the

Jeans instability In stellar physics, the Jeans instability causes the collapse of interstellar gas clouds and subsequent star formation, named after James Jeans. It occurs when the internal gas pressure is not strong enough to prevent gravitational collapse of ...

) depends on density, a higher density makes it more likely for clouds to collapse and form stars. * As the compression wave goes through, it triggers star formation on the leading edge of the spiral arms. * As clouds get swept up by the spiral arms, they collide with one another and drive

shock waves In physics, a shock wave (also spelled shockwave), or shock, is a type of propagating disturbance that moves faster than the local speed of sound in the medium. Like an ordinary wave, a shock wave carries energy and can propagate through a med ...

through the gas, which in turn causes the gas to collapse and form stars. NGC 3810 (captured by the Hubble Space Telescope)

More young stars in spiral arms

Spiral arms appear visually brighter because they contain both young stars and more massive and luminous stars than the rest of the galaxy. As massive stars evolve far more quickly, their demise tends to leave a darker background of fainter stars immediately behind the density waves. This make the density waves much more prominent. Spiral arms simply appear to pass through the older established stars as they travel in their galactic orbits, so they also do not necessarily follow the arms. As stars move through an arm, the space velocity of each stellar system is modified by the gravitational force of the local higher density. Also the newly created stars do not remain forever fixed in the position within the spiral arms, where the average space velocity returns to normal after the stars depart on the other side of the arm.

Gravitationally aligned orbits

Charles Francis and Erik Anderson showed from observations of motions of over 20,000 local stars (within 300 parsecs) that stars do move along spiral arms, and described how mutual gravity between stars causes orbits to align on logarithmic spirals. When the theory is applied to gas, collisions between gas clouds generate the

molecular clouds A molecular cloud, sometimes called a stellar nursery (if star formation is occurring within), is a type of interstellar cloud, the density and size of which permit absorption nebulae, the formation of molecules (most commonly molecular hydroge ...

in which new stars form, and evolution towards grand-design bisymmetric spirals is explained.

Distribution of stars in spirals

The stars in spirals are distributed in thin disks radial with intensity profiles such that :

I(R) = I_0 e^

with

h

being the disk scale-length;

I_0

is the central value; it is useful to define:

R_= 3.2 h

as the size of the stellar disk, whose luminosity is

L_ = 2\pi I_0 h^2

. The spiral galaxies light profiles, in terms of the coordinate

R/h

, do not depend on galaxy luminosity.

Spiral nebula

Before it was understood that spiral galaxies existed outside of our Milky Way galaxy, they were often referred to as ''spiral nebulae''. The question of whether such objects were separate galaxies independent of the Milky Way, or a type of

nebula A nebula ('cloud' or 'fog' in Latin; pl. nebulae, nebulæ or nebulas) is a distinct luminescent part of interstellar medium, which can consist of ionized, neutral or molecular hydrogen and also cosmic dust. Nebulae are often star-forming regio ...

existing within our own galaxy, was the subject of the Great Debate of 1920, between

Heber Curtis Heber Doust Curtis (June 27, 1872 – January 9, 1942) was an American astronomer. He participated in 11 expeditions for the study of solar eclipses, and, as an advocate and theorist that additional galaxies existed outside of the Milky Way, wa ...

Lick Observatory The Lick Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by the University of California. It is on the summit of Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose, California, United States. The observatory is managed by t ...

and

Harlow Shapley Harlow Shapley (November 2, 1885 – October 20, 1972) was an American scientist, head of the Harvard College Observatory (1921–1952), and political activist during the latter New Deal and Fair Deal. Shapley used Cepheid variable stars to estim ...

of Mt. Wilson Observatory. Beginning in 1923,

observed

Cepheid variables A Cepheid variable () is a type of star that pulsates radially, varying in both diameter and temperature and producing changes in brightness with a well-defined stable period and amplitude. A strong direct relationship between a Cepheid varia ...

in several spiral nebulae, including the so-called "Andromeda Nebula", proving that they are, in fact, entire galaxies outside our own. The term ''spiral nebula'' has since fallen out of use.

Milky Way

The

was once considered an ordinary spiral galaxy. Astronomers first began to suspect that the Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy in the 1960s. Their suspicions were confirmed by

observations in 2005, which showed that the Milky Way's central bar is larger than what was previously suspected.

Famous examples

* * * * * * * *

References

External links

* *
Spiral Galaxies @ SEDS Messier pages

an educational website about Spiral Galaxies and other spiral formations found in nature. For high school & general audience.

GLIMPSE: the Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire
* {{Authority control Galaxy morphological types Spirals Edwin Hubble