The Milky Way and Beyond (36 page)

The Local Group of galaxies is a concentration of approximately 50 galaxies dominated by two large spirals, the Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy. For many of these galaxies, distances can be measured by using the Cepheid P-L law, which has been refined and made more precise since it was first used by American astronomer Edwin Hubble. For instance, the nearest external galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, contains thousands of Cepheid variables, which can be compared with Cepheids of known distance in the Milky Way Galaxy to yield a distance determination of 160,000 light-years. This method has been employed for almost all galaxies of the Local Group that contain massive-enough stars to include Cepheids. Most of the rest of the members are elliptical galaxies, which do not have Cepheid variables; their distances are measured by using Population II stars, such as RR Lyrae variables or luminous red giants.

Beyond the Local Group are two nearby groups for which the P-L relation has been used: the Sculptor Group and the M81 Group. Both of these are small clusters of galaxies that are similar in size to the Local Group. They lie at a distance of 10 to 15 million light-years.

One example of an alternate method to the Cepheid P-L relationship makes use of planetary nebulae, the ringlike shells that surround some stars in their late stages of evolution. Planetary nebulae have a variety of luminosities, depending on their age and other physical circumstances; however, it has been determined that the brightest planetary nebulae have an upper limit to their intrinsic brightnesses. This means that astronomers can measure the brightnesses of such nebulae in any given galaxy, find the upper limit to the apparent brightnesses, and then immediately calculate the distance of the galaxy. This technique is effective for measuring distances to galaxies in the Local Group, in nearby groups, and even as far away as the Virgo cluster, which lies at a distance of about 50 million light-years.

Once distances have been established for these nearby galaxies and groups, new criteria are calibrated for extension to fainter galaxies. Examples of the many different criteria that have been tried are the luminosities of the brightest stars in the galaxy, the diameters of the largest H II regions, supernova
luminosities, the spread in the rotational velocities of stars and interstellar gas (the Tully-Fisher relation), and the luminosities of globular clusters. All of these criteria have difficulties in their application because of dependencies on galaxy type, composition, luminosity, and other characteristics, so the results of several methods must be compared and cross-checked. Such distance criteria allow astronomers to measure the distances to galaxies out to a few hundred million light-years.

Beyond 100 million light-years another method becomes possible. The expansion of the universe, at least for the immediate neighbourhood of the Local Group (within one billion light-years or so), is almost linear, so the radial velocity of a galaxy is a reliable distance indicator. The velocity is directly proportional to the distance in this interval, so once a galaxy's radial velocity has been measured, all that must be known is the constant of proportionality, which is called Hubble's constant. Although there still remains some uncertainty in the correct value of Hubble's constant, the value obtained by the HST is generally considered the best current value, which is very near 25 km/sec (15 m/sec) per one million light-years. This value does not apply in or near the Local Group, because radial velocities measured for nearby galaxies and groups are affected by the Local Group's motion with respect to the general background of galaxies, which is toward a concentration of galaxies and groups of galaxies centred on the Virgo cluster (the Local Supercluster). Radial velocities cannot give reliable distances beyond a few billion light-years, because, in the case of such galaxies, the observed velocities depend on what the expansion rate of the universe was then rather than what it is now. The light that is observed today was emitted several billion years ago when the universe was much younger and smaller than it is at present, when it might have been expanding either more rapidly or more slowly than now.

To find the distances of very distant galaxies, astronomers have to avail themselves of methods that make use of extremely bright objects. In the past, astronomers were forced to assume that the brightest galaxies in clusters all have the same true luminosity and that measuring the apparent brightness of the brightest galaxy in a distant cluster will therefore give its distance. This method is no longer used, however, as there is too much scatter in the brightness of the brightest galaxies and because there are reasons to believe that both galaxies and galaxy clusters in the early universe were quite different from those of the present.

The only effective way found so far for measuring distances to the most-distant detectable galaxies is to use the brightness of a certain type of supernova, called Type Ia. In the nearby universe these supernovae—massive stars that have collapsed and ejected much of their material explosively out into interstellar space—show uniformity in their maximum brightnesses; thus, it can be assumed that any supernovae of that type observed in a
very distant galaxy should also have the same luminosity. Recent results have strongly suggested that the universe's expansion rate is greater here and now than it was in the distant past. This change of the expansion rate has important implications for cosmology.

Like stars, galaxies display staggering differences. Studies of their physical properties can reveal their origins in the early universe.

The range in intrinsic size for the external galaxies extends from the smallest systems, such as the extreme dwarf galaxies found near the Milky Way that are only 100 light years across, to giant radio galaxies, the extent of which (including their radio-bright lobes) is more than 3,000,000 light-years. Normal large spiral galaxies, such as the Andromeda Galaxy, have diameters of 100,000 to 500,000 light-years.

The total masses of galaxies are not well known, largely because of the uncertain nature of the hypothesized invisible dark halos that surround many, or possibly all, galaxies. The total mass of material within the radius out to which the stars or gas of a galaxy can be detected is known for many hundreds of systems. The range is from about 100,000 to roughly 1,000,000,000,000 times the Sun's mass. The mass of a typical large spiral is about 500,000,000,000 Suns.

In the late 20th century it became clear that most of the mass in galaxies is not in the form of stars or other visible matter. By measuring the speed with which stars in spiral and elliptical galaxies orbit the centre of the galaxy, one can measure the mass inside that orbit. Most galaxies have more mass than can be accounted for by their stars. Therefore, there is some unidentified “dark matter” that dominates the dynamics of most galaxies. The dark matter seems to be distributed more broadly than the stars in galaxies. Extensive efforts to identify this dark matter have not yet been satisfactory, though the detection of large numbers of very faint stars, including brown dwarfs, was in some sense a by-product of these searches, as was the discovery of the mass of neutrinos. It is somewhat frustrating for astronomers to know that the majority of the mass in galaxies (and in the universe) is of an unknown nature.

The external galaxies show an extremely large range in their total luminosities. The intrinsically faintest are the extreme dwarf elliptical galaxies, such as the Ursa Minor dwarf, which has a luminosity of approximately 100,000 Suns. The most luminous galaxies are those that contain quasars at their centres. These remarkably bright superactive nuclei can be as luminous as 2,000,000,000,000 Suns. The
underlying galaxies are often as much as 100 times fainter than their nuclei. Normal large spiral galaxies have a luminosity of a few hundred billion Suns.

Even though different galaxies have had quite different histories, measurements tend to suggest that most, if not all, galaxies have very nearly the same age. The age of the Milky Way Galaxy, which is measured by determining the ages of the oldest stars found within it, is approximately 13 billion years. Nearby galaxies, even those such as the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds that contain a multitude of very young stars, also have at least a few very old stars of approximately that same age. When more distant galaxies are examined, their spectra and colours closely resemble those of the nearby galaxies, and it is inferred that they too must contain a population of similarly very old stars. Extremely distant galaxies, on the other hand, look younger, but that is because the “look-back” time for them is a significant fraction of their age; the light received from such galaxies was emitted when they were appreciably younger.

It seems likely that all the galaxies began to form about the same time, when the universe had cooled down enough for matter to condense, and they all thus started forming stars during nearly the same epoch. Their large differences are a matter not of age but rather of how they proceeded to regulate the processing of their materials (gas and dust) into stars. Some ellipticals formed almost all their stars during the first few billion years, while others may have had a more complicated history, including various periods of active star formation related to the merging together of smaller galaxies. In a merging event the gas can be compressed, which enhances the conditions necessary for new bursts of star formation. The spirals and the irregulars, on the other hand, have been using up their materials more gradually.

The abundances of the chemical elements in stars and galaxies are remarkably uniform. The ratios of the amounts of the different elements that astronomers observe for the Sun are a reasonably good approximation for those of other stars in the Milky Way Galaxy and also for stars in other galaxies. The main difference found is in the relative amount of the primordial gases, hydrogen and helium. The heavier elements are formed by stellar evolutionary processes, and they are relatively more abundant in areas where extensive star formation has been taking place. Thus, in such small elliptical galaxies as the Draco system, where almost all the stars were formed at the beginning of its lifetime, the component stars are nearly pure hydrogen and helium, while in such large galaxies as the Andromeda Galaxy there are areas where star formation has been active for a long time (right up to the present, in fact), and there investigators find that the heavier elements
are more abundant. In some external galaxies as well as in some parts of the Milky Way Galaxy system, heavy elements are even more abundant than in the Sun but rarely by more than a factor of two or so. Even in such cases, hydrogen and helium make up most of the constituent materials, accounting for at least 90 percent of the mass.

The spiral arms of some galaxies are the most notable part of their structure. However, there are other no less important pieces of a galaxy from a halo of old stars to its interstellar gas.

Most and perhaps all galaxies have a spheroidal component of old stars. In the ellipticals this component constitutes all or most of any given system. In the spirals it represents about half the constituent stars (this fraction varies greatly according to galaxy type). In the irregulars the spheroidal component is very inconspicuous or, possibly in some cases, entirely absent. The structure of the spheroidal component of all galaxies is similar, as if the spirals and irregulars possess a skeleton of old stars arranged in a structure that resembles an elliptical. The radial distribution of stars follows a law of the form

I
= I
_e
10
^{(−3.33{[
r
/
re
]¼ − 1})}
,

where
I
is the surface brightness (or the stellar density) at position
r
,
r
is the radial distance from the centre, and I
_e
and r
_e
are constants. This expression, introduced by the French-born American astronomer Gerard de Vaucouleurs, is an empirical formula that works remarkably well in describing the spheroidal components of almost all galaxies. An alternative formula, put forth by Edwin Hubble, is of the form

I
=
I
₀
(
r
/
a
+ 1)
^−2
,

where
I
is the surface brightness,
I
₀
is the central brightness,
r
is the distance from the centre, and
a
is a scaling constant. Either of these formulas describes the structure well, but neither explains it.

A somewhat more complicated set of equations can be derived on the basis of the mutual gravitational attraction of stars for one another and the long-term effects of close encounters between stars. These models of the spheroidal component (appropriately modified in the presence of other galactic components) fit the observed structures well. Rotation is not an important factor, since most elliptical galaxies and the spheroidal component of spiral systems (e.g., the Milky Way Galaxy) rotate slowly. One of the open questions about the structure of these objects is why they have as much flattening as some of them do. In most cases, the measured rotation rate is inadequate to explain the flattening on the basis of a model of an oblate spheroid that rotates around its short axis. Some elliptical
galaxies are instead prolate spheroids that rotate around their long axis.