Table Of ContentThe World of Galaxies
Gerard and Antoinette de Vaucouleurs in Paris. 1962.
Harold G. Corwin, 1r. Lucette Bottinelli
Editors
The World
of Galaxies
Proceedings of the Conference
, 'Le Monde des Galaxies"
Held 12-14 April 1988 at the
Institut d' Astrophysique de Paris
in Honor of
Gerard and Antoinette de Vaucouleurs
on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday
With 183 Illustrations
Springer-Verlag
New York Berlin Heidelberg
London Paris Tokyo Hong Kong
Harold G. Corwin, If. Lucette Bottinelli
Department of Astronomy Observatoire de Paris,
University of Texas Section de Meudon
Austin, TX 78712 92190 Meudon
U.S.A. France
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publications Data
Symposium, Le monde des galaxies (1988 : Paris, France)
The world of galaxies: proceedings of the Symposium, Le monde des
galaxies, in honor of Gerard and Antoinette de Vaucouleurs on the
occasion of his seventieth birthday / Harold G. Corwin, Lucette
Bottinelli, editors.
p. cm.
1. Galaxies-Congresses. 2. Vaucouleurs, Gerard de, 1918-
3. Vaucouleurs, Antoinette de. I. Vaucouleurs, Gerard Henri de,
1918- II. Vaucouleurs, Antionette de. III. Corwin, Harold G.
IV. Bottinelli, Lucette. V. Title.
QB851.S94 1988
523.1 ' 12-dc20 89-10084
© 1989 Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st edition 1989
All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written
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The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, etc., in this publication, even if the
former are not especially identified, is not to be taken as a sign that such names, as understood by
the Trade Marks and Merchandise Marks Act, may accordingly be used freely by anyone.
Camera-ready copy supplied by editors.
9 8 7 6 5 432 1
ISBN-13: 978-1-4613-9358-0 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4613-9356-6
DOl: 10.1007/978-1-4613-9356-6
This book is dedicated to the memory of
Antoinette de Vaucouleurs
(1921 - 1987)
who helped to show so many of us the way through
The World of Galaxies.
Comite d 'Honneur
Mesdames et Messieurs:
H. Alfven (Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden)
V. A. Ambartsumian (Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory, Armenia,
U.S.S.R.)
A. Berroir (INSU , France)
F. Bertola (Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Italy)
E. M. Burbidge (University of California, San Diego, U. S. A.)
G. Burbidge (University of California, San Diego, U. S. A.)
G. Courtes (LAS, Marseille, France)
W. Cunningham (University of Texas at Austin, U. S. A.)
R. D. Davies (University of Manchester, England, U. K.)
C. Dewitt-Morette (University of Texas at Austin, U. S. A.)
H. Elsasser (Max-Planck-Institut fUr Astronomie, Heidelberg, F. R. G.)
S. Feneuille (CNRS, France)
C. Frejacques (CNRS, France)
H. van der Laan (ESO, Garching bei Miinchen, F. R. G.)
N. U. Mayall (Tucson, Arizona, U. S. A.)
G. Monnet (Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, Hawaii, U. S. A.)
J.-C. Peeker (College de France, Institut d'Astrophysique, Paris, France)
N. G. Roman (Chevy Chase, Maryland, U. S. A.)
E. Schatzman (Observatoire de Nice, France)
B. Takase (Tokyo Astronomical Observatory, Japan)
G. Wlerick (Observatoire de Meudon, France)
L. Woltjer (ESO, Garching bei Miinchen, F. R. G.)
Scientific Organizing Committee
J. Audouze J. Heidmann
J. Bahcall E. Khachikian
F. N. Bash (co-chair) P. van der Kruit
M. Capaccioli (co-chair) D. Sciama
K. C. Freeman H. J. Smith
L. Gouguenheim R. B. Tully
Local Organizing Committee
L. Bottinelli P. Fouque
Y. Bousquet M. Gros
S. Collin J .-C. Peeker ( chair)
F. Delmas
VI
Introduction
From 12 April to 14 April 1988, 120 of Gerard and Antoinette de Vaucouleurs's
friends and colleagues gathered at the Institut d' Astrophysique in Paris to cel
ebrate Gerard's 70th birthday and his remarkable career in Astronomy. The
gathering also honored the memory of Antoinette (who died 29 August 1987
after a long illness) and her own no less remarkable career. This volume collects
the 24 invited review papers and the 60 contributed poster papers presented at
the meeting.
Gerard de Vaucouleurs
Gerard de Vaucouleurs was born on 25 April 1918 in Paris, where he spent his
boyhood. He became an active amateur astronomer in the early 1930's, making
extensive observations of Mars, Jupiter, and variable stars (including the bright
supernova of 1937 in IC 4182). He also began life-long interests in astronomical
photography and galaxy cataloguing during this period. In 1939, he met the
director of the Paris transport system and an equally avid amateur astronomer,
Julien Peridier. De Vaucouleurs worked at Peridier's private observatory at
Le Houga in southwestern France on and off throughout the next decade. His
undergraduate work was in mathematics, astronomy, and experimental physics;
this, combined with his interest in observational astronomy, formed his life-long
empirical approach to science.
After spending 18 months in the French army early in 1939 - 41, Gerard
returned to the Peridier observatory and then, in 1943, to his studies at the
Sorbonne, where he met Antoinette. They were married in October 1944, and
both eventually became graduate students at the Institut d'Astrophysique (1945
- 49). It was there that they were fellow students of J.-C. Pecker, and were
influenced by Jean Cab annes (at the Sorbonne), Paul Couderc (Observatoire de
Paris), and Daniel Chalonge (Institut d'Astrophysique), among others.
De Vaucouleurs's intensive studies of photography led to the publication of
several books on photography including Manuel de Photographie Scientifique
with J. Dragesco and P. Selme, perhaps the most thorough exploration of prac
tical scientific photography ever to see print. He then applied this knowledge
of photography to the problem of the distribution of light in nebulae: the r1/4
law was first published in 1948, a year before he received his (first) doctorate.
Vll
viii Int rod uction
Always a prolific writer, he already had half a dozen books to his credit by this
time, and his 1949 thesis (on Rayleigh scattering of light) is the 79th in his
list of over 500 published books, papers, articles, reviews, and reports (a nearly
complete list of these is given in Gimrd and Antoinette de Vaucouleurs - A
Life for Astronomy, published in 1989 by World Scientific).
In 1950, the de Vaucouleurs emigrated to London where he produced a
weekly radio science program for the French Section of the BBC. The next
move was to the Commonwealth Observatory at Mt. Stromlo in Canberra,
Australia in 1951. This marked a return to active observational astronomy for
de Vaucouleurs. It was here that he called attention in 1953 to the belt of
galaxies stretching across the northern sky, and a similar flattened structure
in the south. He was the first to interpret these as superclusters of galax
ies. In doing so, he pioneered modern studies of the distribution of galaxies
throughout the universe. The Australian years also saw the completion of a
first revision of the Shapley-Ames catalogue of bright galaxies, a survey of the
southern Shapley-Ames objects with the 30-inch Reynolds Reflector, extensive
work on the Magellanic Clouds, and continued observations of Mars and vari
able stars. This work culminated in 1957 with his earning a D. Sc. degree from
the Australian National University.
Short stays at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona (1957 - 58), and at
Harvard College Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1958 - 60) preceded
the de Vaucouleurs's move in 1960 to the newly-formed Astronomy Department
at the University of Texas in Austin, where they finally settled. Research at
Lowell - where de Vaucouleurs met and was strongly influenced by Harold
Johnson - centered on photoelectric observations of galaxies. In charge of
Harvard's planetary research program, de Vaucouleurs began a project to map
the surface of Mars, and was among the first to apply computers to the deter
mination of precise positions of Martian surface features. These studies yielded
the rotation rate of Mars to a precision not surpassed until the reduction of
Viking spacecraft data in the 1970's.
At Texas, de Vaucouleurs continued his studies of the photometric properties
of individual galaxies, superclusters and the distribution of galaxies, and map
ping the surface of Mars. He developed an interest in kinematics of galaxies,
and built the "Galaxymeter," a device that successfully combined a photoelec
tric photometer, an image tube spectrograph, a Fabry-Perot interferometer, and
a photographic reducing camera. Though a few simple changes in the optical
path of the instrument switched it from one mode to another, the de Vau
couleurs used it mostly for obtaining interferograms of late-type galaxies rich
in Ho: emission. The First Reference Catalogue of Bright Galaxies, co-authored
with Antoinette, appeared in 1964, and found immediate application in the first
all-sky survey of galaxy groups, de Vaucouleurs's contribution to the classic
Galaxies and the Universe. The series of photoelectric observations of galaxies
in the Johnson UBV system begun by de Vaucouleurs at Lowell in 1957 is still
in progress today at McDonald; this may be the longest-running extragalactic
Introduction IX
observing project in the history of Astronomy. The de Vaucouleurs produced a
Second Reference Catalogue of Bright Galaxies in 1976, helped in this endeavor
by Harold G. Corwin, Jr.
Though he realized very early in his career that determining distances to
galaxies would be vital to understanding their properties, de Vaucouleurs's in
tense concentration on the problem of the distance scale really began in the
mid-1970's. Drawing on his extensive background in physics and mathematics,
he developed a broad-based approach to the distance scale problem that relies
not on just two or three distance indicators, but over a dozen. His series of seven
papers "The Extragalactic Distance Scale" in The Astrophysical Journal stand
as models of his way of doing proper observational astronomy: collect all the
data one can, analyze them carefully by looking for and correcting systematic
errors, and only then use the data for their intended purpose.
Always keenly aware of the value of collaboration, he has developed an inter
national following of colleagues and co-authors. Astronomers in France, Italy,
Great Britian, Norway, Australia, Argentina, and half a dozen other countries
have worked with him on his many projects. A current example is the Third
Reference Catalogue of Bright Galaxies being readied for publication by not
only the de Vaucouleurs and Corwin, but by Ronald Buta, George Paturel, and
Pascal Fouque, the latter two in France. L. Bottinelli and L. Gouguenheim have
enjoyed a collaboration with de Vaucouleurs for many years, studying the HI
properties of galaxies, particularly as they apply to the distance scale work. De
Vaucouleurs's many students are similarly spread far and wide, and his papers
have appeared in virtually all of the world's major astronomical publications.
Throughout his career, he has also devoted a surprisingly large percentage of
his output to writing for the public or for amateur astronomers.
Of the many awards and honors that de Vaucouleurs has received for his work
and writing (including the Herschel Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society,
the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship of the American Astronomical Society,
election to the U. S. National Academy of Sciences, and lately, election to the
Academy of Sciences of Argentina), perhaps none has pleased him more than
the Janssen Prize of the Societe Astronomique de France, awarded to him and
Antoinette for their lifetime of work together devoted to Astronomy.
Antoinette de Vaucouleurs
Antoinette de Vaucouleurs, born in Paris on 14 November 1921, studied math
ematics, physics, and astronomy at the Sorbonne from 1944 to 1948. Beginning
her career in research in 1949 at the Institut d'Astrophysique, she worked in
spectroscopy, finding new doublets and perturbations in the infrared spectrum
of potassium. She also assisted her husband in many of his early observational
studies of galaxies in France. While in England in the early 1950's, she volun
teered her time as a research assistant at the University of London's Mill Hill
x Introduction
Observatory, measuring parallax plates.
In Australia, Antoinette not only continued with her help to her husband's
work, but carried on her own work in spectroscopy. This culminated in her
publication in 1957 of the first quantitative spectral and luminosity classifications
of 366 southern early-type stars. While at Lowell Observatory, reducing her
husband's first UBV photoelectric photometry of galaxies, she noticed that the
U-band data for several bright Seyfert galaxies fluctuated by several tenths
of a magnitude, much more than would normally be allowed by observational
error alone. She pointed this out to Gerard who told her, "Of course galaxies
aren't variable." He suggested that night sky fluctuations were responsible,
and was very contrite a decade later when the variations of the Seyfert nucluei
were firmly established by other observers. The episode serves to illustrate
Antoinette's acumen and attention to detail that served her well as she continued
the enormous efforts involved in producing the Reference Catalogues at Texas.
Her last work was the literature search for the data that will appear in the Third
Reference Catalogue.
She continued her work in spectroscopy after the move to Texas, but her
attention shifted more and more to galaxies. Her name appears on several long
lists of redshifts of galaxies, and her work with her husband on the bar of the
LMC was the first quantitative analysis of the stellar population of a galaxy from
its spectrum. She took over the chore of handling most of the data reduction
from the many observing runs at McDonald that she shared with her husband.
Again, her meticulous attention to detail caught many errors in the literature
and in the data that would otherwise have gone undetected.
She was passionately dedicated to astronomy, and authored or co-authored
over 60 research papers and books during her career. She contributed to count
less other papers, often turning down a co-authorship when she felt that her
often vital work deserved no more than an acknowledgment. She was just as
dedicated to her husband, and it may be that her greatest contribution was not
her own remarkable astronomical skill, but the fact that she used it to fully
support Gerard and his work during their long journey together to study the
galaxies.
Acknowledgments
Le M onde des Galaxies was a wonderful conference. Helping us to make it so was
our gracious host Prof. Jean Audouze, Director of the Institut d' Astrophysique
de Paris. He was ably assisted by the Local Organizing Committee and by Jean
Begot, Jacques Fagot, Nicole Hallet, Jean Heidmann, Helena Hedreul, Laurence
Lericque, Jean Mouette, and Francoise Warin. These wonderful colleagues to
gether made the meeting run so smoothly that we hardly noticed them doing
their jobs.
During the assembly of the Proceedings, the editors received invaluable help
