Tag: lentilshaped
Spiral galaxies might have been lentil-shaped before becoming starry whirls
The Milky Way might have once looked more like a legume than a starry whirlpool.
Over their unfathomably long lifetimes, spiral galaxies like the Milky Way are generally thought to morph into lentil-shaped “lenticular” galaxies and then into elliptical blobs (SN: 4/23/18). But an analysis of nearby galaxies suggests that our galaxy, and others like it, was once lenticular, astronomer Alister Graham reports in the July Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. If correct, Graham’s proposed