Abstract
The ability to collect unprecedented amounts of astronomical data has enabled
the studying scientific questions that were impractical to study in the
pre-information era. This study uses large datasets collected by four different
robotic telescopes to profile the large-scale distribution of the spin
directions of spiral galaxies. These datasets cover the Northern and Southern
hemispheres, in addition to data acquired from space by the Hubble Space
Telescope. The data were annotated automatically by a fully symmetric
algorithm, as well as manually through a long labor-intensive process, leading
to a dataset of nearly $10^6$ galaxies. The data shows possible patterns of
asymmetric distribution of the spin directions, and the patterns agree between
the different telescopes. The profiles also agree when using automatic or
manual annotation of the galaxies, showing very similar large-scale patterns.
Combining all data from all telescopes allows the most comprehensive analysis
of its kind to date in terms of both the number of galaxies and the footprint
size. The results show a statistically significant profile that is consistent
across all telescopes. The instruments used in this study are DECam, HST, SDSS,
and Pan-STARRS. The paper also discusses possible sources of bias, and analyzes
the design of previous work that showed different results. Further research
will be required to understand and validate these preliminary observations.
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