Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Site Tools

  • AAAS
  • Subscribe
  • Feedback

Site Search

Search Advanced

Science 25 February 2000:
Vol. 287. no. 5457, pp. 1410 - 1411
DOI: 10.1126/science.287.5457.1410
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Perspectives

ASTROPHYSICS:
Galaxy-Scale Mergers and Globular Clusters

François Schweizer

The formation of globular clusters and the origin of galaxy shapes, longstanding mysteries in astrophysics that were long viewed as disjoint, have recently turned out to be closely connected, as Schweizer discusses in this Perspective. Hubble Space Telescope observations of colliding and merging galaxies have shown that globular clusters--densely packed aggregates of 105 to 107 stars--apparently form from massive gas clouds in galaxies that get seriously perturbed. Giant elliptical galaxies contain a particularly high number of globular clusters, which fall into a metal-poor and a metal-rich groups, implying two major episodes of globular cluster formation. The metal-rich group is interpreted as evidence for the formation of elliptical galaxies through major galaxy mergers.

The author is at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 813 Santa Barbara Street, Pasadena, CA 91101-1292, USA. E-mail: schweizer{at}ociw.edu

Read the Full Text

ADVERTISEMENT
Click Me!

ADVERTISEMENT
Click Me!

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)