How Do You Define "Galaxy"? Astronomers Embark on Democratic Process to Forge Definition
It's too late for Pluto, but you can help prevent the Milky Way from being reclassified as a "galactisimal" The more astronomers learn about space, the more questions they come up with. Such as, "what is a galaxy, anyway?" This time, you get to help them decide. Galaxies were first defined when Edwin Hubble peered at the heavens and realized that distant fuzzy nebulae were not nebulae at all, but separate collections of individual stars. He figured out they were too far to be part of the Milky Way, and in 1936, he came up with the Hubble sequence, a galaxy classification still in use today. But it's not that useful for new classes of small, galaxy-esque objects that scientists have discovered in the past decade. There's no accepted definition that takes these objects into account. They include ultra compact dwarfs, ultra-faint dwarf spheroidal galaxies and dwarf elliptical galaxies. Related ArticlesPluto Gets Reclassified...