Astronomers spun up by galaxy-shape finding

Scientists have measured how a galaxy's spin affects its shape - and found faster-spinning galaxies are flatter and rounder. The discovery was made sampling 845 galaxies and could help provide insights into a galaxy's past. For the first time astronomers have measured how a galaxy's spin affects its shape. It sounds simple, but measuring a galaxy's true 3D shape is a tricky problem that astronomers first tried to solve 90 years ago. "This is the first time we've been able to reliably measure how a galaxy's shape depends on any of its other properties - in this case, its rotation speed," said research team leader Dr Caroline Foster of the University of Sydney's School of Physics , who completed this research while working at the Australian Astronomical Observatory. The study was published on 11 September in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Galaxies can be shaped like a pancake, a sea urchin or a football, or anything in between.