This poster captures 24 of my favorite galaxies which have many arms. By “many”, I mean more than 3 arms. Previously, I have posted compilations of
grand design spiral galaxies, which are the prototype 2 arm galaxies, as well as
3 arm galaxies.
Scientists continue to debate whether the Milky Way has 2 arms or 4 arms. Why is this so difficult to determine? Part of the reason, of course, is that we are only able to look at our galaxy from the inside, making an informed view difficult. But the other reason is that many galaxies, including ours, have arm fragments and other permutations which complicate our ability to simply trace the number of galaxy arms.
I count anywhere from 4 to 6 arms for most of the galaxies on this poster. Often, the number of arms/spurs increases with distance from the center.
In identifying my favorite 24 many arm galaxies, many good ones were left out. This includes both of the galaxies named the "Southern Pinwheel" galaxies,
M83 and
NGC 300. To me, these two galaxies both seem to be primarily 2 arm spirals, which is why they did not make the cut for this poster.
Each of the object images on this poster has been posted to my Astrobin account. The links to each individual image are below:
M101NGC 3938NGC 309NGC 3344NGC 3486NGC 1232M33NGC 2403NGC 6946NGC 3810NGC 3726NGC 2835NGC 3953NGC 5033NGC 2336NGC 3020NGC 2715NGC 4712M63M88NGC 3294NGC 908NGC 1620NGC 7721All of the above objects are contained in my
Astrobin Many Galaxy Arms Collection.
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