The Hubble Sequence classifies galaxies according to their morphology and star-forming activity, organising them into a cosmic zoo of spiral, elliptical, and irregular shapes with whirling arms, fuzzy haloes and bright central bulges. Two main types of galaxy are identified in this sequence: elliptical and spiral, with a third type, lenticular, settling somewhere between the two.
This accurately describes what we see in the region of space around us, but how does galaxy morphology change as we look further back in time, to when the Universe was very young?
COSMIC SPECIATION
"This is a key question: when and over what timescale did the Hubble Sequence form?" says BoMee Lee of the University of Massachusetts, USA, lead author of a new paper exploring the sequence. "To do this you need to peer at distant galaxies and compare them to their closer relatives, to see if they too can be described in the same way."
The astronomers used Hubble to look 11 billion years back in time to when the Universe was very young, exploring the anatomy of distant galaxies.
While it was known that the Hubble Sequence holds true as far back as around 8 billion years ago, these new observations push a further 2.5 billion years back in cosmic time, covering a huge 80% of the past history of the Universe. Previous studies had also reached into this epoch of the cosmos to study lower-mass galaxies, but none had conclusively also looked at large, mature galaxies like the Milky Way. The new CANDELS observations confirm that all galaxies this far back - big and small alike - fit into the different classifications of the sequence.
"This is the only comprehensive study to date of the visual appearance of the large, massive galaxies that existed so far back in time," says co-author Arjen van der Wel of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. "The galaxies look remarkably mature, which is not predicted by galaxy formation models to be the case that early on in the history of the Universe."
The galaxies at these earlier times appear to be split between blue star-forming galaxies with a complex structure - including discs, bulges, and messy clumps - and massive red galaxies that are no longer forming stars, as seen in the nearby Universe.
The Hubble Sequence underpins a lot of what we know about how galaxies form and evolve -- finding it to be in place this far back is a significant discovery."
