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8. SYSTEM OF VORONTSOV-VELYAMINOV

The Morphological Catalog of Galaxies (MCG) in four volumes by Vorontsov-Velyaminov, Arhysova, and Krasnogorskaja contains positions, sizes, magnitudes, and descriptions of 29,000 galaxies on prints of the Palomar Sky Survey from the pole to delta = -30°. The catalog is essentially complete to mpg = 15 mag.

A new system of description was devised, using the symbols that are illustrated and discussed in the Introduction to Volume 1 of the MCG. In philosophy, the system is similar to Wolf's scheme, but more particularly to Reynolds's hope for a less simple system than Hubble's (Section 3.2), where the great diversity of pattern would be recognized in the notation. This hope is realized, because the combined symbols in the MCG are sufficient to describe a large variety of detailed structural features. But as yet the system does not constitute a classification of the second kind (Section 1), where continuously varying parameters are used to provide connective relations. This, however, was not the purpose of the Vorontsov-Velyaminov descriptions, and the system cannot be criticized on such grounds because the authors state in the Introduction to Volume 2: ``Our descriptions do not [constitute a] classification. They are merely a step forced by the diversity of galaxies revealed by the Palomar Atlas and by the peculiarity of this Atlas. [It] may be [that] our descriptions will help to elaborate a new [more] appropriate classification.'' Undoubtedly features such as the gamma forms, the rings, pseudo-rings, and peculiar arm structures to which Vorontsov-Velyaminov has often called attention will prove to be important when the detailed dynamics of galaxies become better understood. At the moment, the other classification systems in general use emphasize the more gross aspects of galaxy systematics.