Richard Brent Tully (born March 9, 1943) is a Canadian-born American

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. Astronomers observe astronomical objects, such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, galax ...

at the Institute for Astronomy in

Honolulu Honolulu ( ; ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, located in the Pacific Ocean. It is the county seat of the Consolidated city-county, consolidated City and County of Honol ...

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...

. Born in

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...

, and raised in

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

, Tully's specialty is the

astrophysics Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline, James Keeler, said, astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the ...

galaxies 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 ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar Sys ...

. With J. Richard Fisher, he proposed the

Tully–Fisher relation In astronomy, the Tully–Fisher relation (TFR) is a widely verified empirical relationship between the mass or intrinsic luminosity of a spiral galaxy and its asymptotic rotation velocity or emission line width. Since the observed brightness of ...

, which shows that the luminosity of a galaxy and the orbital velocities of its stars are correlated. This relation can be used to determine the distances of galaxies and, by inference, the size and age of the universe. His books ''The Nearby Galaxies Atlas & Catalog'' published in 1988 give the 3D locations for 2,400 galaxies within 130 million

light year A light-year, alternatively spelled light year (ly or lyr), is a unit of length used to express astronomical distance, astronomical distances and is equal to exactly , which is approximately 9.46 trillion km or 5.88 trillion mi. As defined by t ...

s of

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

. A particularly remarkable discovery was that our

Milky Way galaxy The Milky Way or Milky Way Galaxy is the galaxy that includes the 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 in other arms of the galaxy, which are ...

lies adjacent a vast underdense region that Tully called the

Local Void The Local Void is a vast, Void (astronomy), empty region of Interstellar medium, space, lying adjacent to the Local Group. Discovered by R. Brent Tully, Brent Tully and J. Richard Fisher, Rick Fisher in 1987, the Local Void is now known to be c ...

. A more extended compilation of 30,000 galaxies within a

cube A cube or regular hexahedron is a three-dimensional space, three-dimensional solid object in geometry, which is bounded by six congruent square (geometry), square faces, a type of polyhedron. It has twelve congruent edges and eight vertices. It i ...

of diameter 700 million

s centered on Earth can be visually navigated with the

planetarium A planetarium (: planetariums or planetaria) is a theatre built primarily for presenting educational and entertaining shows about astronomy and the night sky, or for training in celestial navigation. A dominant feature of most planetariums is ...

computer software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

Starry Night Pro, where the data is called the ''Tully Database''. Tully, along with colleagues Helene Courtois, Daniel Pomarede, and Yehuda Hoffman, have compiled and analyzed galaxy distances and deviations of galaxy motions from cosmic expansion within the Cosmicflows program. Noteworthy discoveries have been the full extent of our home supercluster of galaxies, given the name Laniakea Supercluster, and of the adjacent, very large South Pole Wall of galaxies. Cumulatively, the large scale structure in the distribution of matter in a volume of diameter 1.3 billion light years centered on our location mapped by Tully and his colleagues reasonably accounts for the motion of our Local Group of galaxies of over 600 kilometers/second although there remains the possibility of influences from even larger scales. Brent Tully received numerous awards and recognitions, among which the Viktor Ambartsumian Prize and the

Gruber Prize in Cosmology The Gruber Prize in Cosmology, established in 2000, is one of three prestigious international awards worth US$500,000 awarded by the Gruber Foundation, a non-profit organization based at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Since 2001, t ...

, both in 2014.

References

External links

R. Brent Tully Personal Homepage
* * 1943 births Living people Canadian astronomers Scientists from Toronto Institute for Astronomy (Hawaii) people {{US-astronomer-stub

See also

References

External links