David J. Eicher - Galaxies: Inside the Universes Star Cities

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As with any book project, many people have contributed their talents and guidance to my work, beyond the writing and compiling. That said, any shortcomings of this book are wholly my own. But I want to acknowledge a number of generous people who have contributed to make this book happen. They start with my family, Lynda Eicher and Chris Eicher, who as always have supported this project from the outset. My superb editors at Clarkson Potter, Angelin Borsics and Jenni Zellner, helped shape the book from day one, and the rest of the team worked hard to ensure its sucess: designer Mia Johnson, illustrator Irene Laschi, production editor Joyce Wong, and production manager Phil Leung. My agent, Jennifer Weltz, has been a huge source of advice and suggestions, as was the original agent at my firm, Laura Biagi, before she departed for other adventures.

Great thanks are due to one of the worlds leading experts on galaxies, Jay Gallagher of the University of Wisconsin, for kindly contributing the books foreword. Jays knowledge of galaxy research stretches far back beyond my first days of knowing him, back in the 1980s, when he was at Lowell Observatory.

I want to acknowledge the generous help of several folks at Kalmbach Media, the publishers of Astronomy magazine. Michael Bakich helped to sort and find images through a mountain of fantastic shots he receives from amateur astronomers all across the world. Thanks are also due to Steve George and Becky Lang, who kindly allowed use of some diagrams that first appeared in Astronomy and Discover magazines.

I also want to thank several friends for general encouragement, contributing advice and expertise, and helping me along through a period of simultaneous projects. They include Richard Dawkins, Garik Israelian, Brian May, Robin Rees, Brian Skiff, and Glenn Smith. I thank Timothy Ferris for his classic book Galaxies , published in 1980, that inspired me to want to write about the subject someday.

Thanks are due to the very generous Cynthia Hunt of Carnegie Observatories for sending the original photographs of the Andromeda Galaxy made by Edwin Hubble in 1923.

And lastly, but far from least, I want to thank the generous photographers who enabled me to use their imagery in this book. The quality of galaxy photographs taken by backyard astronomers has skyrocketed in the last decade, and I am proud to be able to include their efforts here. These heroic imagers are Adam Block, Ken Crawford, Thomas V. Davis, Bob Fera, R. Jay GaBany, Don Goldman, Dietmar Hager, Tony Hallas, Mark Hanson, Bernhard Hubl, Jason Jennings, Warren Keller, Jack Newton, Gerald Rhemann, and Chris Schur.

THE GRAND SPIRAL FACE-ON GALAXY NGC 1232

One of the gems of the southern sky, NGC 1232 is a face-on many-armed spiral hosted by the constellation Eridanus. Its intricate armed structure shows a gravitational swirl of interstellar gas, star clusters, and star forming regions. The galaxy lies 60 million light-years away.

DAVID J. EICHER is editor in chief of Astronomy magazine and a board member of the international Starmus Festival. He has also written shows for the Adler Planetarium and NASA, is the coauthor, with Brian May, of Mission Moon 3-D , and is the author of The New Cosmos .

RESOURCES

Alfaro, Emilio J., Enrique Prez, and Jos Franco, eds. How Does the Galaxy Work? A Galactic Tertulia with Don Cox and Ron Reynolds. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004.

Appenzeller, Immo. High-Redshift Galaxies: Light from the Early Universe. New York: Springer-Verlag, 2009.

Arp, Halton. Catalogue of Discordant Redshift Associations. Montreal: Apeiron Montreal, 2003.

. Quasars, Redshifts, and Controversies. Berkeley, Calif.: Interstellar Media, 1987.

. Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology, and Academic Science. Montreal: Apeiron Montreal, 1998.

Combes, Franoise. Mysteries of Galaxy Formation. New York: Springer-Verlag, 2010.

Ferris, Timothy. Galaxies. New York: Stewart, Tabori, and Chang, 1982.

Hodge, Paul. Atlas of the Andromeda Galaxy. Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Press, 1981.

. Galaxies. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986.

Hubble, Edwin. The Realm of the Nebulae. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2013.

Jones, Mark H., Robert J. A. Lambourne, and Stephen Serjeant, eds. An Introduction to Galaxies and Cosmology. Second ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Keel, William C. The Road to Galaxy Formation. New York: Springer-Verlag, 2002.

Mackie, Glen. The Multiwavelength Atlas of Galaxies. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Mulchaey, John S., Alan Dressler, and Augustus Oemler, eds. Clusters of Galaxies: Probes of Cosmological Structure and Galaxy Evolution. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Peterson, Bradley M. An Introduction to Active Galactic Nuclei. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Sandage, Allan, Mary Sandage, and Jerome Kristian, eds. Galaxies and the Universe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.

Saviane, I., V. D. Ivanov, and J. Borissova, eds. Groups of Galaxies in the Nearby Universe. New York: Springer-Verlag, 2007.

Schneider, Peter. Extragalactic Astronomy and Cosmology: An Introduction. New York: Springer-Verlag, 2006.

Schultz, David. The Andromeda Galaxy and the Rise of Modern Astronomy. New York: Springer-Verlag, 2012.

Sheehan, William, and Christopher J. Conselice. Galactic Encounters: Our Majestic and Evolving Star-System, From the Big Bang to Times End. New York: Springer-Verlag, 2015.

Sparke, Linda, and John S. Gallagher. Galaxies in the Universe: An Introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Struck, Curtis. Galaxy Collisions: Forging New Worlds from Cosmic Crashes. New York: Springer-Verlag, 2011.

Waller, William H. The Milky Way: An Insiders Guide. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2013.

. and Paul W. Hodge. Galaxies and the Cosmic Frontier. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003.

Wray, James D. The Color Atlas of Galaxies. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

PHOTOGRAPH CREDITS

: NASA, ESO, NAOJ, Giovanni Paglioli, R. Colombari, and R. Gendler

: P. Horlek and ESO

: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI)

: Tony Hallas

: NASA, ESA, Z. Levay and R. van der Marel (STScI), T. Hallas, and A. Mellinger

: Yuri Beletsky/Las Campanas Observatory/Carnegie Institution

: Images courtesy of the Carnegie Observatories/Cindy Hunt

: NASA, ESA, P. van Dokkum (Yale University), S. Patel (Leiden University), and 3DHST Team

: SSROSouth (S. Mazlin, J. Harvey, D. Verschatse, and R. Gilbert) and K. Ivarsen (UNC/CTIO/PROMPT)

: NASA, JPLCaltech

: NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton, B. F. Williams, and L. C. Johnson (University of Washington), the PHAT Team, and R. Gendler

: Tony Hallas

: Adam Block, Mount Lemmon SkyCenter, University of Arizona

: Don Goldman

: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)