An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics
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A galaxy that produces huge amounts of energy at its center, which cannot be attributed to normal processes from stars, interstellar medium, and their interactions. There are several types of active galaxies: → Seyfert galaxies, → quasars, and → blazars. All of these objects show brightness variations, some as short as 3 hours. These fluctuations indicate a relatively very small size for the central object, because an object cannot vary in brightness faster than light can travel across it. For example, an object that is one → light-year in diameter cannot vary significantly in brightness over a period of less than one year.

→ active; → galaxy.

The nearest → spiral galaxy to our own and a major member of the → Local Group. It lies in the constellation → Andromeda and is the most remote object normally visible to the naked eye. The earliest known reference to this galaxy is by the Iranian astronomer Sufi who called it "the little cloud" in his Book of Fixed Stars (A.D. 964).

→ Andromeda; → galaxy.

A → spiral galaxy that exhibits a bar-shaped structure in its nucleus. → galactic bar.

→ barred; → spiral; → galaxy.

The theory that bright galaxies form preferentially from anomalously overdense perturbations in the → early Universe.

→ biased; → galaxy; → formation.

A pair of galaxies in orbit around each other.

→ binary; → galaxy.

Kahkašân, → galaxy; dorin→ binary.

An small → irregular galaxy undergoing → violent star formation activity. These objects appear blue by reason of containing clusters of hot, → massive stars which ionize the surrounding interstellar gas. They are chemically unevolved since their → metallicity is only 1/3 to 1/30 of the solar value. Same as → H II galaxy.

→ blue; → compact; → dwarf; → galaxy.

A galaxy having a very small size (< 1 kpc), very low stellar mass (typically 10^6.5 to 10^7.5  Msun), very low gas → metallicity (3 to 10% solar → metallicity, and very high → ionization. Blueberry galaxies, compared to star forming → dwarf galaxies, have similar stellar mass and luminosity, but much stronger → [O III] doublet (λλ4959+5007) line strength and gas ionization. Because Blueberry galaxies are selected by the strong [O III] → emission lines, they represent the star-forming → dwarf galaxies with the highest emission line strength and gas ionization. On the other hand, compared to → Green Pea galaxies at → redshifts z ~ 0.2-0.3 and typical high-z→ Lyman alpha emitting galaxies (LAEs) found in the current narrow-band surveys, Blueberry galaxies have similarly strong emission lines but about 10-100 times smaller stellar mass, → star formation rate, and luminosity. So Blueberry galaxies represent the faint-end of → Green Pea galaxies and → Lyman alpha emitting galaxies (Yang et al, 2017, arxiv/1706.02819, and references therein).

→ blueberry; → galaxy.

A radio galaxy that shows broad optical emission lines. → broad-line region.

→ broad; → line; → radio galaxy.

A galaxy with a striking ring-like feature lying about 400 million → light-years away in the → constellation  → Sculptor. The ring-like structure, over 100,000 light-years in diameter, is composed of regions of → star formation filled with very bright, → massive stars. The shape results from collision with another smaller galaxy.

Cartwheel, from cart from O.N. kartr; → wheel; → galaxy.

Kahkašân, → galaxy. Carx-e arrâbé "cartwheel," from carx, → wheel + arrâbé "cart, chariot," maybe related to Mid.Pers. ras, ray "wheel," O.Pers./Av. raθa- "wheel," Khotanese rrha- "car," Skt. ratha- "wheel," L. rota "wheel," PIE base *rotos "wheel."

An irregularly shaped, clumpy → star-forming galaxy that does not fall anywhere on the → Hubble sequence and appears frequently at → redshifts z ~ 1-4. Galaxies at z ≤ 1 with similar morphologies and enhanced → star formation have been identified, but become less common with decreasing redshift. Clumpy galaxies are prominent in the → early Universe.

→ clumpy; → galaxy.

A galaxy belonging to a comparatively rare class of galaxies possessing very small radii and high central → surface brightnesses. The prototype is the → Local Group  → dwarf galaxy M32. At the low mass end of the → early-type galaxy population, the well-known → mass-size relation splits into diffuse and compact branches. The compact branch is composed of compact elliptical galaxies (cEs) and may even extend to the regime of → ultracompact dwarfs. Compact ellipticals have → effective radii (R_e) generally less than 0.6 kpc, while their diffuse counterparts, the → dwarf elliptical galaxies (dEs) or → dwarf spheroidals (dSphs), have R_e ~ 0.6-3 kpc at similar mass. One formation scenario for cEs proposes that they are low-mass classical → elliptical galaxies, in accordance with the fact that they follow the same trend on the fundamental plane as the giant ellipticals. This implies formation through hierarchical mergers, as in "normal" ellipticals. Most cEs are notably more → metal-rich than dEs and are outliers from the → mass-metallicity relation of massive early type galaxies and low-mass galaxies in the Local Group. An alternative formation scenario addresses the problem of high metallicity by proposing that cEs are the remnants of larger, more massive galaxies. In this scenario, their disks are stripped by strong tidal interactions (→ tidal stripping) with an even more massive host galaxy, leaving only the compact, metal-rich bulges (Du et al., 2018, arxiv/1811.06778 and references therein).

→ compact; → elliptical; → galaxy.

A galaxy with no disk or nebulous background and a high surface brightness that appears only barely larger than a star-like point on a sky survey photograph.

→ compact; → galaxy.

A galaxy with a stellar mass of M ≥ 10¹¹Msun and an → effective radius of R_e ≤ 1.5 kpc. Many studies have shown that massive galaxies with low → star formation rates were remarkably compact at a → redshift of z≥ 2. At fixed stellar mass of Mstars ≅ 10¹¹Msun, quiescent galaxies are a factor of ~ 4 smaller at z = 2 than at z = 0. As the stellar mass of the galaxies also evolves, the inferred size growth of individual galaxies is even larger. It is unlikely that all massive galaxies in the present-day Universe had a compact progenitor. However, the vast majority of CMGs that are observed at z = 2 ended up in the center of a much larger galaxy today. Their size growth after z = 2 is probably dominated by minor → mergers. Such mergers are expected because other mechanisms cannot easily produce the observed scaling between size growth and mass growth (P. G. van Dokkum1 et al., 2015, ApJ 813, 23).

→ compact; → massive; → galaxy.

An → elliptical galaxy that displays a → surface brightness profile with a distinct break from a steep outer slope to a shallower inner → cusp. Core profiles mainly occur in very luminous elliptical galaxies and are considered the result of dissipation-less → mergers of two galaxies that have central → supermassive black holes (S. P. Rusli et al., 2013, AJ 146, 160).

→ core; → elliptical; → galaxy.

A radio galaxy characterized by an emission "halo" surrounding a more intense "core". About 20% of the known extended radio sources are of the core-halo type.

→ core; → halo; → galaxy.

A galaxy consisting of a thin disk of stars and → interstellar matter which may include → spiral arms and → bar.

→ disk; → galaxy.

A galaxy that is much smaller than other members of the elliptical class; it is designated as dE. A subtype of dwarf ellipticals is called a → dwarf spheroidal galaxy (dSph). The basic characteristics of the class are low surface brightness and smooth light distribution. They range in luminosity from that of the faintest dSph galaies M_V ~ -9 to about -17. In the → Local Group there are 19 known dEs. They are very common in → galaxy clusters.

→ dwarf; → elliptical; → galaxy.

A small, low luminosity galaxy that is associated with a larger spiral galaxy and may make up part of a galactic halo. There are many of them in the Local Group, and often orbit around larger galaxies such as the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy. There are three main types of them: → dwarf elliptical galaxy (dE), → dwarf irregular galaxy (dI), and → dwarf spiral galaxy (dSA).

→ dwarf; → galaxy.

An irregular galaxy that is much smaller than other irregulars. Dwarf irregulars are generally metal poor and have relatively high fractions of gas. They are thought to be similar to the earliest galaxies that populated the Universe, and are therefore important to understand the overall evolution of galaxies.

→ dwarf; → irregular; → galaxy.

A subtype of dwarf ellipticals (→ dwarf elliptical galaxy), which are companion to the → Milky Way and other similar galaxies. The first example of such objects was discovered by Harlow Shapley (1938) in the constellation → Sculptor. 22 such galaxies are known currently to orbit the Milky Way and at least 36 exist in the → Local Group of galaxies. Nearby → galaxy clusters such as the → Virgo, → Fornax, → Centaurus, and → Coma clusters contain hundreds to thousands of individual dSph galaxies. These galaxies have very low → surface brightnesses, as low as only 1% that of the → sky background. They are also among the smallest, least luminous galaxies known. Most of the radiation from dSph galaxies is emitted by stars in the optical portion of the → electromagnetic spectrum. The lack of strong → emission lines, → infrared, or → radio emission suggests that these galaxies are generally devoid of → interstellar medium. The velocities of stars within dSph galaxies are so high that them must be disrupting. However, the bulk of mass in these galaxies might be undetected. Dynamical models that include → dark matter do adequately explain the → velocity dispersion of the stars in all dSph systems. In the most extreme cases, only 1% of the mass of the galaxy is visible. Many of the Local Group dSph galaxies show evidence for → star formation more recent than 10 Gyr.

→ dwarf; → spheroidal; → galaxy.