The project was begun in 1997 based upon the earlier observations by two groups[1][2] using data from images derived from the pre-refurbished Hubble Space Telescope.
The collaboration sought answers to the differences in the origins of the various galaxy types — elliptical, lenticular, and spiral.
The exact process may be related to high galactic density, or to the total mass in a rich cluster's central core.
The Morphs collaboration found that one of the principal mechanisms of this transformation involves the interaction among spiral galaxies, as they fall toward the core of the cluster.
The Inamori Magellan Areal Camera and Spectrograph (IMACS) Cluster Building Survey is the follow-on project to the Morphs collaboration.