Research Description for the General Public
Dr. Aaron J. Romanowsky
University of California Observatories
"Galaxies are to astronomy as ecosystems are to biology." - James Binney & Scott Tremaine, Galactic Dynamics
Galaxies
If you've ever looked up on a dark clear night, you've probably
seen the Milky Way, a faint, hazy stream stretching across the sky.
Familiar to humankind since ancient times, its nature wasn't known
until Galileo turned his telescope toward it and discovered that it is
composed of countless faint stars.
In fact, the Milky Way is the visible marker of a great system in which
our solar system is located: a galaxy
made up of 100 billion stars and vast amounts of gas,
while the 500 or so individual stars visible to the naked eye represent just a
handful of our closest neighbors.
Our galaxy is shaped something like a pizza, and our own star, the Sun,
is located in a piece of pepperoni halfway out toward the crusty edge.
This is why from our perspective, we see
a band of light wrapped around the sky.
In the early 20th century, it was discovered that the Milky Way is not all there is to the universe.
Beginning nearby, and stretching into the distance as far as can be seen,
there are billions of other galaxies, which are the patchwork
quilt making up the universe.
These galaxies come in many shapes and sizes, but there are two major
general types:
Spiral galaxies are like our own Milky way: flat, gas-rich systems
with prominent spiral arms. Examples include
the nearby
Andromeda Galaxy,
the
Sombrero Galaxy,
M74,
M83,
NGC 1232,
NGC 4622,
M33,
NGC 6946,
NGC 7331,
NGC 1365,
M51,
NGC 3310,
M95,
NGC 3184,
NGC 2841,
M64,
NGC 891,
NGC 1300,
M100,
M96,
NGC 2336,
NGC 3627,
and
M101.
Elliptical galaxies are rounded, featureless balls of stars.
Some examples are
M87,
NGC 1316,
and
NGC 4365.
An elliptical galaxy and a spiral galaxy next to each other can be seen
here.
A group of two ellipticals and one spiral are
here.
On a larger scale is the
Coma Cluster,
a huge swarming mass of hundreds of ellipticals and spirals.
For more information about galaxies,
see here
or for more photos, see
here
and
here.
Dark Matter
One of the more astounding findings of late 20th century astronomy was
that there is much more to the universe that meets the eye.
All the visible matter we can see (stars, gas, dust) makes up only about
10% of the material in the universe.
The rest, dark matter, is a material (or several different kinds
of materials) of a nature still quite unknown.
Being "dark", it has so far never been directly seen, but its existence is
inferred--mainly from its gravitational effects.
One of the first places dark matter was detected was around spiral galaxies.
The cold gas in the outer parts of these galaxies was found to move too quickly to
be explained by the gravitational force of the visible galaxy.
It turns out that around all spiral galaxies, there is a vast reservoir
of dark matter: the dark halos.
(See
here
for a more detailed explanation of how the presence of dark matter is inferred
in spiral galaxies, or
here
or here
for more general information about dark matter.)
We now think that dark matter is not only pervasive, but essential.
In the paradigm known as "cold dark matter" or
"hierarchical structure formation",
it is the collapse of great blobs of dark matter under their
own gravity that has led to the condensation of ordinary gaseous matter into
the visible galaxies, stars, planets, and ultimately life that we
see today.
(A more recent discovery is "dark energy", but that's another matter.
Ahem.)
But what about elliptical galaxies? Do they have dark halos? And if so,
are they similar to spirals' dark halos?
Yes, according to the theoretical picture above, but
empirically,
these questions have been unanswerable because ellipticals don't have
cold gas which can be measured.
Some other way is needed to probe for dark matter.
There are in fact some objects around elliptical galaxies which can
be studied, albeit much more difficult than it is with cold gas.
These include globular clusters and planetary nebulae.
If one can measure the velocities of such objects in sufficient
numbers, one can tell how strong the gravitational forces are around
the galaxy, and thus how much dark matter there is.
Globular Clusters
Around every galaxy, including our own Milky Way, there are numerous
smaller stellar systems called globular clusters.
These are dense balls of "only" about a million stars each,
and are the oldest known objects in the universe.
Some examples of globulars lurking around our galaxy are
NGC 6093
Omega Centauri
(also with close-up),
M92,
NGC 6397,
47 Tucanae
(close-up here),
M15
(also with
close-up),
NGC 1916,
and
NGC 5904.
,
,
(To take a virtual tour of the Milky Way's globular cluster system,
see here.
For more information about globulars,
see here.)
These dense collections of stars are visible in distant galaxies when
indiviual stars are not.
See M87, where most of the "stars" in the image are not stars at all but globular clusters
swarming around the central galaxy.
It is possible to measure the velocities of such globulars given a large
enough telescope.
Planetary Nebulae
The name planetary nebula is misleading -- these nebulae have nothing to do with planets
(when first discovered with small telescopes, their typically round appearance made
them look like planets, hence the name).
They are the cast-off remnants of aged, dying stars -- shells of gas
lit up fluorescently by the central ember's fading rays.
For a more detailed explanation, see
here or
here.
For observing information, see
Planetary Nebulae Observer's Home Page.
An example of a planetary nebula (PN) is the
Eskimo Nebula
You can see the remarkable difference in resolution between this
spaced-based telescope image and
this ground-based telescope image.
Others include the
Cat's Eye Nebula
(also with
X-ray
and
optical
emission superimposed),
the Hourglass Nebula,
the Dumbbell Nebula,
the Ring Nebula,
the Ant Nebula,
the Southern Ring Nebula,
the Spirograph Nebula,
NGC 6751,
the Retina Nebula,
the Red Spider Nebula,
the Helix Nebula,
(also here,
with close-up of "cometary knots" here),
M2-9,
the Rotten Egg Nebula,
NGC 2440,
the Snowball Nebula,
Abell 39,
the Butterfly Nebula,
the Stingray Nebula,
and NGC 7027.
A whole gallery of PN images from Hubble Space Telescope can be found
here,
and a ground-based gallery
here,
and a false-color one
here.
Three examples of a "proto-PN" are
the Egg Nebula,
CRL 618,
and Gomez's Hamburger.
,
,
,
,
Because these PNe fluoresce, they emit their light with a
few well-defined colors, and so with the use of appropriate color
filters, the contrast between a PN and the background light can be increased,
and thus they can be observed in distant galaxies,
and have their velocities measured.
I have made many trips to
some of the world's largest telescopes to measure the velocities of extragalactic PNe.
Two such "observing runs" are described
here
and here.
I am also heavily involved with a new instrument specially built for this
purpose,
the Planetary Nebula Spectrograph.
Halo Dynamics
In addition to observing the velocities (kinematics) of these
"halo tracer" objects, I also work on the dynamical modeling
necessary to interpret the data.
That is, I calculate how much dark matter there
is, try to understand the internal motions of the galaxies,
make inferences about
their formational histories, etc.
If you want to know the gory details, you can see
here.
Naked Galaxies
Now for the bottom line: what about results??
Our work on bright elliptical galaxies like
M87 and M49 has turned up a lot of dark matter, as expected.
However, with some of the first studies ever of
"ordinary" ellipticals like NGC 3379, we got a bit of a shock.
In these galaxies, we've found that the PN velocities fall off
quickly with radius, as though there are no extra
gravitational forces at work - and thus no dark matter!
Below are some images that show this.
First
is NGC 3379, with PN velocities shown around it.
Blue dots
show PNe which are moving toward us (Doppler blueshift)
and red dots are moving away (redshift).
The dot sizes are larger for larger velocities;
you can see by eye that the dots (and velocities) get smaller away
from the galaxy center.
Second
is a plot of the velocities with radius for
four different galaxies, superimposed on the same plot.
The yellow dotted line
shows the prediction if there's no dark matter, which
matches up quite well with the data.
So in these cases the "missing mass" is missing:
what you see is what you get.
Since these systems aren't enveloped by the "normal" cloak of dark matter, we call
them "naked galaxies" -
although they might not actually be naked, but only scantily clad,
since we can't rule out a small amount of dark matter.
Why are these galaxies naked?
There are lots of ideas
(e.g., they've lost their dark halos through interactions with other galaxies),
but none of them seems to work so far.
At this point, we'll continue gathering data on different galaxies,
and analyzing them, so stay tuned.
If you'd like to know still more about the history of the universe, see
Ned Wright's Cosmology Tutorial.
For an entire basic astronomy overview online, see
Astronomy Notes.
For still more spectacular astronomical photos,
see the Anglo-Australian Observatory or
the Hubble Space Telescope.
Last updated 22 September 2003