In this assignment you will do morphological classification of galaxies by eye. Though there are many automated classification routines available, the human eye is still reliable for pattern recognition.
Download the instructions from here: Galaxy Morphology Classification This additional material is required to complete the assignment : Galaxy Colors Data
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Read the articles posted in the Readings section on Low Surface Brightness galaxies and Dwarf galaxies. We will discuss briefly both these articles in class.
Read the article "Formation and Evolution of the Milky Way" by Cristina Chiappini. Come prepared to class to discuss this paper.
Draw a map with Galactic coordinates (Hammer-Aitoff projection) and plot the distribution of Galactic globular clusters in it. Each globular cluster's location should be marked with a reasonably big filled circle. The plot should also have the location of the Sun clearly marked. From the observed distribution what all can you infer?
Milky Way Globular Cluster Catalog: Download Also read the Encyclopedia of A & A article on Globular Clusters. Come prepared to class to discuss this paper. The assignment is split into two parts :
(1) Create a Hammer - Aitoff grid system suitable for plotting the position of objects in Galactic coordinates. You can refer to this write-up for help on how to create such a grid system. Hint: One approach to create the grid system is to draw lines of constant Gal. latitude (for different Gal. longitudes between -180 and +180 deg), followed by drawing lines of constant Gal. longitude (for Gal. latitudes between -90 and +90 deg). (2) Plot the position of point sources from the 2 micron all sky survey (2MASS) catalog. Instructions for downloading the 2MASS point source catalog is given below. Once you have the catalog, plot the location of the point sources in Galactic coordinates (in the Aitoff plot). Based on this exercise, come prepared to answer the following questions: (a) What could be these "point sources" in the 2MASS catalogue? (b) What can you infer by looking at their distribution in the Galaxy? For downloading the 2MASS Point Source Catalog (PSC), follow these steps
In class I showed a figure of the distances to molecular cloud complexes to indicate the spiral structure within the disk. The figure was from Dame et al. 1986, ApJ. Go through the paper and figure out how the distances to the cloud complexes were estimated?
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March 2017
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