Articles

Andrews, B. “What Are Galaxies Trying to Tell Us?” Astronomy (February 2011): 24. Introduction to our understanding of the shapes and evolution of different types of galaxies.

Barger, A. “The Midlife Crisis of the Cosmos.” Scientific American (January 2005): 46. On how our time differs from the early universe in terms of what galaxies are doing, and what role supermassive black holes play.

Berman, B. “The Missing Universe.” Astronomy (April 2014): 24. Brief review of dark matter, what it could be, and modified theories of gravity that can also explain it.

Faber, S., et al. “Staring Back to Cosmic Dawn.” Sky & Telescope (June 2014): 18. Program to see the most distant and earliest galaxies with the Hubble.

Geller, M., & Huchra, J. “Mapping the Universe.” Sky & Telescope (August 1991): 134. On their project mapping the location of galaxies in three dimensions.

Hooper, D. “Dark Matter in the Discovery Age.” Sky & Telescope (January 2013): 26. On experiments looking for the nature of dark matter.

James, C. R. “The Hubble Deep Field: The Picture Worth a Trillion Stars.” Astronomy (November 2015): 44. Detailed history and results, plus the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field.

Kaufmann, G., & van den Bosch, F. “The Life Cycle of Galaxies.” Scientific American (June 2002): 46. On the evolution of galaxies and how the different shapes of galaxies develop.

Knapp, G. “Mining the Heavens: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey.” Sky & Telescope (August 1997): 40.

Kron, R., & Butler, S. “Stars and Strips Forever.” Astronomy (February 1999): 48. On the Sloan Digital Survey.

Kruesi, L. “What Do We Really Know about Dark Matter?” Astronomy (November 2009): 28. Focuses on what dark matter could be and experiments to find out.

Larson, R., & Bromm, V. “The First Stars in the Universe.” Scientific American (December 2001): 64. On the dark ages and the birth of the first stars.

Nadis, S. “Exploring the Galaxy-Black Hole Connection.” Astronomy (May 2010): 28. About the role of massive black holes in the evolution of galaxies.

Nadis, S. “Astronomers Reveal the Universe’s Hidden Structure.” Astronomy (September 2013): 44. How dark matter is the scaffolding on which the visible universe rests.

Schilling, G. “Hubble Goes the Distance.” Sky & Telescope (January 2015): 20. Using gravitational lensing with HST to see the most distant galaxies.

Strauss, M. “Reading the Blueprints of Creation.” Scientific American (February 2004): 54. On large-scale surveys of galaxies and what they tell us about the organization of the early universe.

Tytell, D. “A Wide Deep Field: Getting the Big Picture.” Sky & Telescope (September 2001): 42. On the NOAO survey of deep sky objects.

Villard, R. “How Gravity’s Grand Illusion Reveals the Universe.” Astronomy (January 2013): 44. On gravitational lensing and what it teaches us.

Websites

Assembly of Galaxies: Introductory background information about galaxies: what we know and what we want to learn.

Brief History of Gravitational Lensing: From Einstein OnLine.

Cosmic Structures: Brief review page on how galaxies are organized, from the Sloan Survey.

Discovery of the First Gravitational Lens: By Ray Weymann, 2009.

Gravitational Lensing Discoveries from the Hubble Space Telescope: A chronological list of news releases and images.

Local Group of Galaxies: Clickable map from the Atlas of the Universe project. See also their Virgo Cluster page.

RotCurve: Try your hand at using real galaxy rotation curve data to measure dark matter halos using this Java applet simulation.

Sloan Digital Sky Survey Website: Includes nontechnical and technical parts.

Spyglasses into the Universe: Hubble page on gravitational lensing; includes links to videos.

Virgo Cluster of Galaxies: A page with brief information and links to maps, images, etc.

Videos

Cosmic Simulations: Beautiful videos with computer simulations of how galaxies form, from the FIRE group.

Cosmology of the Local Universe: Narrated flythrough of maps of galaxies showing the closer regions of the universe (17:35).

Gravitational Lensing: Video from Fermilab, with Dr. Don Lincoln (7:14).

How Galaxies Were Cooked from the Primordial Soup: A 2013 public talk by Dr. Sandra Faber of Lick Observatory about the evolution of galaxies; part of the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series (1:19:33).

Hubble Extreme Deep Field Pushes Back Frontiers of Time and Space: Brief 2012 video (2:42).

Looking Deeply into the Universe in 3-D: 2015 ESOCast video on how the Very Large Telescopes are used to explore the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field and learn more about the faintest and most distant galaxies (5:12).

Millennium Simulation: A supercomputer in Germany follows the evolution of a representative large box as the universe evolves.

Movies of flying through the large-scale local structure: By Brent Tully.

Shedding Light on Dark Matter: 2008 TED talk on galaxies and dark matter by physicist Patricia Burchat (17:08).

Sloan Digital Sky Survey overview movies

Virtual Universe: An MIT model of a section of universe evolving, with dark matter included (4:11).

When Two Galaxies Collide: Computer simulation, which stops at various points and shows a Hubble image of just such a system in nature (1:37).