The clumpiness of EAGLE galaxies

We have added new galaxies from the EAGLE simulations for you to classify on http://www.galaxyzoo.org. To find out more about what to do if some of them appear clumpy read this blog post.

It’s important to note that while EAGLE produces some impressive galaxy images, there are still some ways in which they don’t quite resemble real galaxies. A prominent example of this is in how many star-formation “clumps” there are in galaxies. Stars form in clumps or clusters of varying size, and some observed galaxies are clumpy in appearance, so the models are reproducing a real phenomenon. It also seems that these galaxies are more common in the early Universe, and are an important part of galaxy evolution. However, the clumpy galaxies may be too common within EAGLE.

Some EAGLE galaxies that appear clumpy. Clumps appear bright blue, because they have formed recently and contain the hottest and brightest (but shortest-lived) stars. From left to right, you can see clumpy galaxies that may appear disk-like, rounded or more chaotic in shape.

We have an understanding of why this happens: clumps can result from the limited detail with which galaxies can be modelled (even in the most powerful supercomputers), and the simplifications that need to be made to how gas interacts. This doesn’t affect other things we can learn from classifying these images. If you come across a galaxy that looks super-clumpy like the above images, the best thing to do is just ignore the clumpiness and classify the rest of the galaxy (If you would like to learn more about clumps, read about our sister project Galaxy Zoo: Clump Scout).