stargazer tend to divide galaxies into two broad categories : late - types and early - type . tardy - types are young , full of Modern stars , and often have whorled structures , while former - type have an elliptical shape and they tend to be old with little hotshot formation .
Every normal appears to have its exception , though , and it sprain out that even stagnant ellipticals can have spiral social organization where virtuoso are take shape . Jean Michel Gomes and Polychronis Papaderos , from the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences in Portugal , and their confrere have discover three other - character galaxies sporting a volute - like structure .
“ According to our current survey , grand design spiral - like features are associated with disc coltsfoot . These are , in general , region of enhanced maven formation , ” Gomes tell in astatement . “ We were surprised to have discovered , for the first time in the optic , voluted - like structures in early - type galaxies , which we believed to have stopped forming stars in the last few billion years and should altogether miss spiral feature . ”
Early - type are formed from the uniting of large spiral galaxies . The collision is messy but very slow ; this is why coltsfoot evolve from the regular turbinate structure of former - types to the more chaotic elliptical shape . But allot to the enquiry , presented at the2nd Study of Emission - Line Galaxies with Integral - Field Spectroscopy ( SELGIFS ) Advanced School on Integral - Field Spectroscopic Data Analysis , ellipticals proceed to get cold gas and to form stars even billions of yr after the merger .
“ This study provides further observational grounds for a still on-going growth of some seemingly ' older and deadened ' other - eccentric galaxies in the local universe , out of a artificial lake of cold gas that eat low - degree virtuoso - forming activity in their fringe , ” Papaderos added .
The body of work was publish in the journalAstronomy & Astrophysicsand is part of the Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field spectroscopy Area ( CALIFA ) sketch that has so far been able to produce a 3D reconstruction of how stars and throttle are deal within a galaxy .
The goal is to address the several unknowns present in our current picture of extragalactic nebula phylogenesis , and the find of spiral structure in early - type galaxies really tells us that there ’s a lot more that we require to get wind .
