Spirals in a galaxy may arise from density waves
Thursday, October 9, 2014 - 08:30
in Astronomy & Space
It's often said that the shape of a spiral galaxy follows the curve of a golden spiral. You can see this, for example, in the image above. While it's often implied that this curve matches exactly, that isn't the case. The spirals of a spiral galaxy do tend to approximately follow a logarithmic spiral (of which the golden spiral is a special case), it is typically only a rough approximation.