Galaxy spin direction distribution in HST and SDSS show similar large-scale asymmetry

Abstract

Several recent observations using large datasets of galaxies showed non-random distribution of the spin directions of spiral galaxies, even when the galaxies are too far from each other to have gravitational interaction. Here, a dataset of $\sim 8.7\cdot 10^3$ spiral galaxies imaged by Hubble Space Telescope is used to test and profile a possible asymmetry between galaxy spin directions. The asymmetry between galaxies with opposite spin directions is compared to the asymmetry of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The two datasets contain different galaxies at different redshift ranges, and each dataset was annotated using a different annotation method. The results show that both datasets show a similar asymmetry in the COSMOS field, which is covered by both telescopes. Fitting the asymmetry of the galaxies to cosine dependence shows a dipole axis with probabilities of $\sim 2.8\sigma$ and $\sim 7.38\sigma$ in HST and SDSS, respectively. The most likely dipole axis identified in the HST galaxies is at $(\alpha =78^o,\delta =47^o)$, and is well within the $1\sigma$ error range compared to the location of the most likely dipole axis in the SDSS galaxies with $z>0.15$, identified at $(\alpha =71^o,\delta =61^o)$.

arXiv commentPASA, accepted

References in corpus (31)

• Asymmetries in the CMB anisotropy field
• A Cosmic Variance Cookbook
• Cosmic Microwave Background Quadrupole and Ellipsoidal Universe
• Probing cosmic isotropy with a new X-ray galaxy cluster sample through the $L_{\text{X}}-T$ scaling relation
• Suppressing CMB Quadrupole with a Bounce from Contracting Phase to Inflation
• CMB Anisotropies and Inflation from Non-Standard Spinors
• Does the small CMB quadrupole moment suggest new physics?
• A Low CMB Quadrupole from Dark Energy Isocurvature Perturbations
• Galaxy Zoo: The large-scale spin statistics of spiral galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Anisotropic Cosmological Constant and the CMB Quadrupole Anomaly
• Double Inflation and the Low CMB Quadrupole
• Probing the Cosmological Principle in the counts of radio galaxies at different frequencies
• Probing the isotropy of cosmic acceleration traced by Type Ia supernovae
• Alignment of quasar polarizations with large-scale structures
• Ganalyzer: A tool for automatic galaxy image analysis
• Is the Cosmic Microwave Background Circularly Polarized?
• Cosmology with moving dark energy and the CMB quadrupole
• Primordial Gravitational Waves from Galaxy Intrinsic Alignments
• A Complete Statistical Analysis for the Quadrupole Amplitude in an Ellipsoidal Universe
• Galaxy Zoo: Chiral correlation function of galaxy spins
• Handedness asymmetry of spiral galaxies with z<0.3 shows cosmic parity violation and a dipole axis
• Anisotropy in the all-sky distribution of galaxy morphological types
• On the nature and correction of the spurious S-wise spiral galaxy winding bias in Galaxy Zoo 1
• Mysterious Coherence in Several-Megaparsec Scales Between Galaxy Rotation and Neighbor Motion
• Quadrupole--octopole alignment of CMB related to primordial power spectrum with dipolar modulation in anisotropic spacetime
• Parity in the CMB: Space Oddity
• Asymmetry between galaxies with clockwise handedness and counterclockwise handedness
• Galaxy Rotation Coherent with the Motions of Neighbors: Discovery of Observational Evidence
• An Oppositeness in the Cosmology: Distribution of the Gamma-Ray Bursts and the Cosmological Principle
• Colour asymmetry between galaxies with clockwise and counterclockwise handedness
• Preheating and Dark Sector of Universe

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Is the Observable Universe Consistent with the Cosmological Principle?
• Cosmological implications of the anisotropy of ten galaxy cluster scaling relations
• Fanaroff-Riley classification of radio galaxies using group-equivariant convolutional neural networks
• The distribution of galaxy rotation in JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey
• Analysis of spin directions of galaxies in the DESI Legacy Survey
• New evidence and analysis of cosmological-scale asymmetry in galaxy spin directions
• Using 3D and 2D analysis for analyzing large-scale asymmetry in galaxy spin directions
• Reanalysis of the spin direction distribution of Galaxy Zoo SDSS spiral galaxies
• Analysis of $\sim 10^6$ spiral galaxies from four telescopes shows large-scale patterns of asymmetry in galaxy spin directions
• Large-scale asymmetry in the distribution of galaxy spin directions -- analysis and reproduction
• Large-scale asymmetry in galaxy spin directions -- analysis of galaxies with spectra in DES, SDSS, and DESI Legacy Survey
• Asymmetry in galaxy spin directions: a fully reproducible experiment using HSC data