spiral nebula
1
8.1
- noun
- /ˈspaɪrəl ˈnɛbjʊlə/
- Archaic
:
nebulosa espiral
- Hubble's discovery showed that spiral nebulae are entire systems of stars in their own right, as huge and as packed with stars as our own Milky Way.
He and colleagues made a survey of the spiral nebula.
- He and colleagues made a survey of the spiral nebula.
Examples
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And then Goethe was the first to suggest that spiral nebulae were swirling masses of stars.
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Spectroscopy showed that nearly all the spiral nebulae, a shape that happens to predominate outside the swath of the Milky Way, are moving away from Earth at very high speeds.
Academic text (2005) -
There was a lot of evidence that the spiral nebulae couldn't be that far away.
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By this time, Hubble was making very rapid progress on understanding the nature of the spiral "nebulae."
Academic text (1990) -
Before then, many astronomers believed that the spiral nebulae might be parts of our own Milky Way, which, they believed, might contain the entire universe.
Academic text (1990) -
Had some catastrophic explosion taken place in the center of the Milky Way, kicking out only the spiral nebulae?
Academic text (2005) -
He extended J.C. Kapteyn's model of two "star streams" and supported the idea that the spiral nebulae are external systems of stars.
Academic text (1993) -
His name was Vesto Melvin Slipher, and his later work in obtaining spectra of the "spiral nebulae" served as the foundation for Edwin Hubble's discovery of the expansion of the Universe.
Academic text (2000) -
Hubble's discoveries revealed that the Andromeda galaxy, once thought to be just a spiral nebula, is actually a massive collection of stars similar to our Milky Way.
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In the early 20th century, many astronomers classified various distant spiral nebulae as clouds of gas before realizing they were entire galaxies.
Synonyms
5
5.9
A large group of stars with a bright center and curved arms that wind outward
How Developed
- Specialized
525
4.1
- Archaic
1
8.1
- Specialized
- Specialized
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is compositionally built (adjective + noun): a learner who knows 'spiral' and 'nebula' can infer a space cloud or object with a spiral shape. However, the technical identification of a 'spiral nebula' as a galaxy (rather than just a spiral-shaped cloud) is domain-specific and historically shifted, so the exact intended meaning is not fully predictable to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Spiral nebula comes from how these objects looked in early telescopes: a fuzzy 'cloud' that turned like a pinwheel, so people called them spiral nebula because 'nebula' means 'cloud'. Today we know a spiral nebula is actually a whole 'galaxy' with winding arms of stars, so the name stuck because of that clear spiral shape.