Abstract
As noted in previous chapters, the discovery of the universe of galaxies was accomplished through slow but steady progress. However, since 1945 the pace of change in understanding galaxies has increased at a rapid rate. In the earlier days, as we have been discussing so far, certain individuals— for example, Messier, the Herschels, Rosse, Huggins, Barnard, Shapley, Hubble—made towering contributions, and therefore command the attention of the chronicler of the nebulae.
The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.
—Blaise Pascal, Pensées
Edith Sitwell recalled [an] afternoon in Hubble’s study, when he showed her plates of “universes in the heavens” millions of light years away. “How terrifying!” she had remarked. “Only at first,” he replied. “When you are not used to them. Afterwards, they give one comfort. For then you know that there is nothing to worry about—nothing at all.”
—Gale E. Christianson, Mariner of the Nebulae, p.359
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References
J.H. Oort, quoted in Giuseppe Bertin, Dynamics of Galaxies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 26.
For an excellent text on dust, at a high technical level, see: D.C.B. Whittet, Dust in the Galactic Environment. Bristol and Philadelphia: Institute of Physics Publishing, 2nd ed., 2003.
D.L.Block and R.J. Wainscoat, “Morphological differences between optical and infrared images of the spiral galaxy NGC 309,” Nature, 353 (Sept. 5, 1991), 48-50.
Theodore Andrea Cook, The Curves of Life (London: Constable and Co., 1914), viii.
Curtis Struck, Galaxy Collisions: forging new worlds from cosmic crashes (New York: Springer, 2011), 9.
O.J. Eggen, D. Lynden-Bell, A.R. Sandage, “Evidence from the motions of old stars that the Galaxy collapsed,” Astrophysical Journal, 136 (1962), 748-766.
A classic paper on the subject is: A. and J. Toomre, “Galactic bridges and tails,” Astrophysical Journal, 178 (1972), 623-666.
Shapley, Galaxies, 172-173.
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Sheehan, W., Conselice, C.J. (2015). To Forge a Galaxy. In: Galactic Encounters. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-85347-5_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-85347-5_13
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