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 There is now a computer font available to
astronomers: Galaxy. Well, not really, not yet, but at some point there probably
will be. The rendition of "Welcome
to RF Cafe! Founded 1999" shown to the left was generated automatically by a
website called "My Galaxies."
Thanks to thousands of volunteers worldwide that have participated in The
Galaxy Zoo's project of classifying galaxies, a set of letter-shaped
galaxies has been identified that can be used to write words like "rf cafe." It
appears that so far God (or the Big Bang - take your pick) did not create a full
set of upper case letter-shaped galaxies. Some letters can be considered upper or
lower case, like Cc Ii Jj Oo Pp Ss Uu Vv
Ww Xx Zz.
  As you might expect, there are
number-shaped galaxies as well
(image right). After all, mathematics is the language of the universe. Judging by
the shape of the numbers "1" and "7," and the fact that MyGalaxies.co.uk domain
is registered in the UK, I'm guessing the selected galaxy shapes are modeled after
the European-style numeral set.
 With the contributions to astronomy made
by ancient Greeks, you would think there are galaxies shaped like Greek characters,
but evidently not - or at least they have not been identified yet. I input ελληνικά
(Greek) and the algorithm was befuddled. Arabic (العربية) seems to thwart its logic
as well even though Arabs did a lot of looking at the sky. Before you get all upset
at the Universe for seemingly excluding your language's characters, consider that
these images are as viewed from the perspective of the Earth's current location
relative to everything else. At some point in time past or perhaps sometime in the
future maybe those galaxies had different visual shapes or we were looking at them
from a different angle. Saturn is a good example of how much difference perspective
can make. At certain times during its orbit around the sun the rings are presented
edge-on and practically disappear from our vantage point because the planet's rotational
axis is tilted with its orbital plane, but at other times, like now, the rings are
tilted towards us so they are apparent even with a cheap pair of 8x35 binoculars.
Posted December 30, 2022
(updated from original
post on 9/12/2012)
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