Comments and questions about the
APOD on the main view screen.
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Ann
- 4725 Å
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Post
by Ann » Tue Jan 02, 2024 5:31 am
Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Tue Jan 02, 2024 5:26 am
To make more clear just how arbitrary the term is, just follow the Wikipedia link to the
paper where the term was coined, and we see that it has nothing to do with anything we're talking about here! What the authors say is "...the primary problem we wish to resolve is the persistence of the spiral pattern or the grand design over the whole disk, on the scale of 10 kpc." That's it! Others took it from there and made it mean whatever they wanted... all with no formal or official definition at all.
And the reference Wikipedia provides to its definition is nothing more than some guy's website with an asserted definition! Not much of a reference!
So yeah, it means whatever we want it to mean.
Okay, Chris! Point taken!
I still think we need a term for incredibly elegant two-armed galaxies. I'm going to keep using the term "grand design galaxy" to describe them.
Ann
Color Commentator
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Chris Peterson
- Abominable Snowman
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Post
by Chris Peterson » Tue Jan 02, 2024 2:40 pm
Ann wrote: ↑Tue Jan 02, 2024 5:31 am
Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Tue Jan 02, 2024 5:26 am
To make more clear just how arbitrary the term is, just follow the Wikipedia link to the
paper where the term was coined, and we see that it has nothing to do with anything we're talking about here! What the authors say is "...the primary problem we wish to resolve is the persistence of the spiral pattern or the grand design over the whole disk, on the scale of 10 kpc." That's it! Others took it from there and made it mean whatever they wanted... all with no formal or official definition at all.
And the reference Wikipedia provides to its definition is nothing more than some guy's website with an asserted definition! Not much of a reference!
So yeah, it means whatever we want it to mean.
Okay, Chris! Point taken!
I still think we need a term for incredibly elegant two-armed galaxies. I'm going to keep using the term "grand design galaxy" to describe them.
Ann
How about "elegant two-armed galaxy"?
