Guzman III 1

Francisco Guzman III

ENGL 1301-115

Dr. Sharity Nelson

11 November 2023

Essay 3 Final draft

The article entitled “The Formation and Evolution of Galaxies” is an informational article

in which the author, Pieter Can Dokkum, aims to provide researchers and scholars with

information regarding the study of galaxy formation and the history of this research. The article

goes into great detail regarding astronomy and how we have progressed over the years in our

technology to get a better understanding of the processes that govern galaxy formation. The

author draws in the reader's interest in the information provided in this study of galaxy formation

through the usage of pictures that help provide visual context to the arguments and information

listed in this article, and the listing of credible sources to help strengthen their credibility in their

study and the topics that they dive into in this paper.

To begin with, the author includes images throughout the article of galaxies and their

many formations in order to provide their audience with visual context to the topics of galaxy

formation. For example, the first image shown in the article titled “The Hubble Ultra Deep

Field” which shows us interstellar space with hundreds to thousands of galaxies lighting up the

huge, dark cosmic void helps provide context to the text in the passage that states how we have

advanced tremendously in the field of astronomy and have gone from studying the extent of the

Milky Way and wondering if it was all there was to the universe to creating marvels in

technology that allow us to see billions of galaxies from millions of lightyears away. The second
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image shown in the article titled “Spiraling Galaxy” which shows us a vast spiral galaxy with a

bright galactic core surrounded by huge misty arms made of stars helps provide context to one of

the arguments in the article that argues that although we can't fully study our own galaxy due to

its monumental size and distance, we can make comparisons by studying other spiral galaxies in

the cosmos to help us further understand our own galactic past. The third image in the article that

depicts an early galaxy formation by showing a ball of light, the galactic core, surrounded by a

cloudy ball of stars coincides with the explanation in the text that goes into detail on how early

galaxy formation resulted in basic galaxy structures that were essentially just a galactic core,

supermassive blackholes, surrounded by a huge ball of gas and stars. The fourth and last image

in the article which shows us a comparison of a computer-generated Milky Way vs the actual

thing helps us understand visually the information that is provided in the text below which goes

into detail on how the advancement in computer technology has allowed us to simulate artificial

galaxies that are very similar to the ones we see in the real world. All of these images sprinkled

throughout the article help the reader better understand the topics explored in this paper by

providing visual context to the arguments and information presented in the text which further

draws the reader into the topic of galaxy formation.

Another way the author draws in their audience into the study of galaxy formation is

through the usage of credible sources throughout the article that helps better strengthen their

argument and credibility as an author. One example of this would be the crediting of the Sloan

Digital Sky Survey, which is used to back up the author’s point on how astronomers now have a

fairly complete census of galaxies in close proximity to our galactic neighborhood. He goes into

detail on how the Sloan survey has mapped out about a million galaxies in our galactic cluster

and how due to this survey we can now study their luminosities, colors, morphologies, star
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formation rates, and many other properties that can help us further understand the vastness and

complexity of the cosmos. Another group of sources that the author credits in his study to help

further provide credibility to the topics he goes into detail about are the CANDELS, 3D-HST,

and HUDF09+12 projects. These projects help strengthen the author’s statement on how we have

used technology to help us further understand the early history of our universe as these projects

have provided us with information on distant galaxies and their properties. While this may seem

confusing at first as one may question how we are to study the past of the universe by simply

viewing distant galaxies, the author goes into detail on how due to the nature of light and its

finite speed, light from distant galaxies may take millions to billions of years to reach us. By this

logic, by viewing galaxies from vast distances, we are actually viewing the past of our universe

and by studying these distant galaxies, we can find out the history of the early epochs of our

universe. Yet another study the author credits in order to strengthen is credibility in the argument

he provides in the text is the ERIS computer simulation which he explains how this computer

simulation and many similar to it have allowed us to create artificial simulations of our universe

and more specifically, the formation of galaxies in our universe. He states that while this

simulations are not perfect as they have certain parameters that limit the authenticity of the

simulation, they still have provided us with almost near accurate simulations of galaxy formation

and have helped further the study in the astronomy field tenfold. The final source that the author

credits in this article is the James Webb telescope which at the time of publication had not been

deployed yet. The James Webb scope as explained by the author is a telescope that is the

successor to the Hubble Space Telescope that as he explained “would open up the earliest epochs

of galaxy formation for study and provide vastly deeper and higher resolution views of distant
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galaxies that we have access to now. These sources all help to strengthen the information and

points the author makes through the article about the study of galactic formation.

In summary, the author helps draw in their target audience to the information and

arguments made in this study by providing visual context to the information presented in the

article and by crediting well-known scientific sources/surveys/studies in order to strengthen the

arguments and statements made in this scientific publication. These rhetorical strategies used by

the author throughout the article can be used in every paper or study that any author wishes to

publish in order to strengthen their paper into one that draws the attention of their target audience

while providing a clear understanding of the information that they wish to convey.
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Appendix

Figure 1. The Hubble Ultra Deep Field

Figure 2. A Spiral Galaxy from The
from NASA and ESA/Hubble
Dragonfly Telephoto Array

Figure 4. Computer simulation of the

Figure 3. Early-type Galaxies from
Milky Way compared to the Actual
NASA and ESA/Hubble
Milky Way

Works Cited
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 Dokkum, Pieter “The Formation and Evolution of Galaxies.” Atoms to the Stars, Vol.143,
No. 4, 2014, pp. 113-124, JSTOR, hhtps://www.jstor.org/stable/43298022
 National Aeronautics and Space Administration and ESA/Hubble,
hhtp://www.spacetelescope.org/
 The Dragonfly Telephoto Array,
hhtp://www.dunlap.utoronto.ca/instrumentation/dragonfly/
 Javiera Guedes, Simone Callegari, Piero Madau, and Lucio Mayer, “Forming Realistic
Late-Type Spiral in a ACDM Universe: The Eris Simulation, “The Astrophysical Journal
742 (76) (2011), arXiv:1103.6030.