Morphology Classes

Each row of the index in galaxy_textures.CLASSES maps to one renderer module. The renderers are deliberately simple, analytic shapes rather than physical simulations — see Caveats for what that trades away.

kind	name	module	what it looks like
0	elliptical	galaxy_textures.elliptical	Smooth bulge with a warped halo
1	spiral	galaxy_textures.spiral	2-3 arms, occasional bifurcation, bright knots
2	barred spiral	galaxy_textures.barred_spiral	Compact bar with arms rooted at the bar ends
3	merger	galaxy_textures.merger	Two interacting disks with bridge and tails
4	edge-on	galaxy_textures.edge_on	Thin disk, bulge, dust lane
5	irregular	galaxy_textures.irregular	Clumpy body with noisy, disturbed structure

Shared machinery for background noise and satellite companions lives in galaxy_textures.shared and is used across all six renderers.

Caveats

These are stylized textures, not simulated observations:

• Single-band grayscale only — no real color cues.

• Gaussian noise is added, but there is no PSF/seeing model.

• Merger structure is a controlled cartoon of tidal interaction, not an N-body simulation.

• The classes are cleaner than real survey data on purpose, which makes the set better for demos than for benchmarking survey-grade classification.