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.
Bothun, G. “Beyond the Hubble Sequence.” Sky & Telescope (May 2000): 36. History and updating of Hubble’s classification scheme.
Croswell, K. “The Drama Next Door.” Sky & Telescope (December 2023): 12. On the development of our understanding of the nature and evolution of the Andromeda Galaxy.
Dalcanton, J. “The Overlooked Galaxies.” Sky & Telescope (April 1998): 28. On low-brightness galaxies, which have been easy to miss.
Eicher, D. “A Universe of Galaxies.” Astronomy (March 2019): 20. A brief history of and introduction to the subject of galaxies. Part of a special issue on this topic.
Eicher, D. “Explore the World of Galaxies.” Astronomy (June 2020): 28. An introduction to the history and current state of our study of galaxies.
Eicher, D. “V.M. Slipher’s Expanding Universe.” Astronomy (May 2020): 30. On the life and work of the Lowell Observatory astronomer who pioneered galaxy redshift measurements.
Martin, P. and Friedli, D. “At the Hearts of Barred Galaxies.” Sky & Telescope (March 1999): 32. On barred spirals.
MacDougal, D. “Vesto Slipher’s Fast Stars and Hotrod Galaxies.” Sky & Telescope (September 2023). On his pioneering measurements of redshifts in galaxies.
Olsen, K. “A Tale of Two Galaxies.” Astronomy (November 2020): 16. About the Magellanic Clouds, past and future observations. Redd, N. “The Magellanic Giant.” Sky & Telescope (June 2021): 20. On the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, and its history of interactions.
Russell, D. “Island Universes from Wright to Hubble.” Sky & Telescope (January 1999) 56. A history of our discovery of galaxies.
Smith, R. “The Great Debate Revisited.” Sky & Telescope (January 1983): 28. On the Shapley-Curtis debate concerning the extent of the Milky Way and the existence of other galaxies.
Tosteson, D. “Hubble’s Eureka Moment.” Sky & Telescope (September 2023): 26. How Hubble used a Cepheid to establish that the Andromeda Galaxy was far away.
Websites
ABCs of Distance: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/distance.htm. A concise summary by astronomer Ned Wright of all the different methods we use to get distances in astronomy.
Cosmic Times 1929: http://cosmictimes.gsfc.nasa.gov/online_edition/1929Cosmic/index.html. NASA project explaining Hubble’s work and surrounding discoveries as if you were reading newspaper articles.
Edwin Hubble: Biography: https://www.nasa.gov/content/about-story-edwin-hubble . Concise biography from the people at the Hubble Space Telescope.
Edwin Hubble: http://apod.nasa.gov/diamond_jubilee/d_1996/sandage_hubble.html. An article on the life and work of Hubble by his student and successor, Allan Sandage. A bit technical in places, but giving a real picture of the man and the science.
International Astronomical Union resolution to call Hubble Law the Hubble-Lemaître Law (with background information): https://www.iau.org/news/pressreleases/detail/iau1812/.
NASA Science: Introduction to Galaxies: http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-are-galaxies/. A brief overview with links to other pages, and recent Hubble Space Telescope discoveries.
National Optical Astronomy Observatories Gallery of Galaxies: https://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/galaxies.html. A collection of images and information about galaxies and galaxy groups of different types. Another impressive archive can be found at the European Southern Observatory site: https://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/category/galaxies/.
Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Introduction to Galaxies: http://skyserver.sdss.org/dr1/en/astro/galaxies/galaxies.asp. Another brief overview.
Universe Expansion Measured by Hubble Space Telescope: https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/1999/news-1999-19.html. The background material here provides a nice chronology of how we discovered and measured the expansion of the universe over the last century.
Videos
Edwin Hubble (Hubblecast Episode 89): https://esahubble.org/videos/hubblecast89a/. The life and work of Hubble (5:58).
Galaxies Across Space and Time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0P2-qcos90. A voyage out into the realm of galaxies and back in time, showing how galaxies today have clearer structure and long ago they are still in the process of organizing themselves (2:52).
Georges LeMaître: Monseigneur Big Bang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL6ndOAOEeE. A concise biography from the European Space Agency featuring his ideas (3:42).
Grand Design in a Galactic Festoon (HubbleCast #11): https://esahubble.org/videos/heic0719a/. A tour through the detailed Hubble image of the galaxy M74, a beautiful face-on spiral (5:44).
How Many Galaxies Are There in the Universe (2016 HubbleCast #96): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEbLT_U0XyY. About counts of galaxies on deep field images (5:43).
Hubble’s Views of the Deep Universe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=argR2U15w-M. A 2015 public talk by Brandon Lawton of the Space Telescope Science Institute about galaxies and beyond; it starts 17 minutes into the video (1:26:20).
Spirals in Nature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1TVoD9_vLQ. Looks at how spiral structure forms in a variety of phenomena and compares them to spiral galaxies (4:16).
The Day We Found the Universe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV23qWIieBw. In the first 40 minutes, science writer Marcia Bartusiak discusses Hubble’s work and the discovery of the expansion of the cosmos (1:24:31).
Zoom: A Spiral Among Thousands: https://esawebb.org/videos/potm2301b/. A journey into a James Webb Space Telescope image of the spiral galaxy LEDA 2046648, a little over a billion light-years from Earth, surrounded by fainter, more distant galaxies that the power of the telescope makes visible (1:00).