GALAXY SURVEY RESULTS

As outlined in the methodology section of this report, the apparent rotation of a random sample of galaxies was estimated using the application version of the GalacticEllipseApplet.

Images were selected from the internet, where many outstanding sources of New General Catalog (NGC) and Messier images are available. These include the

• The Hubble Space Telescope Data Archive
• The STScI Digital Sky Survey
• The Interactive NGC Catalog On-Line
• The NGC/IC Project Home Page
• The Ohio State Bright Galaxy Survey
• ASP list of NGC Images
• Webart Magic's collection of Messier images

Some of these archives require the NGC or Messier Catalog number to be known, or the sky location where a particular object is found, or are not sufficiently extensive collections.

While galactic images from Webart Magic's Messier catalog was used during development of the GalacticEllipseApplet and application, a larger random sample was required for the actual survey.

Following consideration of the many alternatives, spiral galaxy images from The Galaxy Catalog by Zsotlz Frei were selected. Both a text-based and thumbnail interface to the image collection is available on Princeton University website.

After eliminating galaxies not exhibiting an obvious spiral structure, eighty one high resolution images were left for analysis using the application version of the GalacticEllipseApplet. Results are summarized below.

Range Count 0-9 1 10-19 2 20-29 2 30-39 8 40-49 14 50-59 17 60-69 14 70-79 15 80-90 8

The apparent orientation of galaxies in Princeton Galaxy Catalog exhibited the expected property that more edge-on galaxies were observed than face-on galaxies. However, this number peaked at around 50 degrees, and then dropped, possibly partially due to the uncertainty associated with fitting ellipses for near edge-on galaxies, and other factors that will be considered shortly.

Links to images on the Princeton Galaxy Catalog web site, and the measured apparent rotation values are listed in the table below.