Giant elliptical galaxies are generally thought to be the result of
galaxy mergers
. Ordinary elliptical galaxies may also form in this manner, or may have formed from the gravitational collapse of an interstellar gas cloud.
What are 3 facts about elliptical galaxies?
The largest elliptical galaxies can be over a million light-years in diameter. The smallest “dwarf elliptical” galaxies are less than one-tenth the size of the Milky Way! Elliptical galaxies
have very little gas and dust
. Since stars form from gas, little star formation occurs in elliptical galaxies.
What is believed to form elliptical galaxies?
When two spirals collide
, they lose their familiar shape, morphing into the less-structured elliptical galaxies. A supermassive black hole is thought to lie at the center of these ancient galaxies. These gluttonous giants consume gas and dust, and may play a role in the slower growth of elliptical galaxies.
What is the largest elliptical galaxy?
IC 1101
is a supergiant elliptical galaxy at the center of the Abell 2029 galaxy cluster and is one of the largest known galaxies. Its halo extends about 600 kiloparsecs (2 million light-years) from its core, and it has a total of about 100 trillion stars.
What is an elliptical galaxy quizlet?
Elliptical Galaxy. Spherical (ish)
distributions of old stars
, no distinct features and no disk, have older stars and little to no current star formation, similar to bulges of spiral galaxies, but larger. Large massive galaxies. the largest and most massive galaxies in the universe are elliptical.
What if we lived in an elliptical galaxy?
If we lived in an elliptical galaxy, we would
see the stars of our galaxy spread out all around the sky
, not in a single band. Another clue comes when astronomers map young, bright stars and clouds of ionized hydrogen in the Milky Way’s disk. … There are billions of other galaxies in the Universe.
How do stars move in an elliptical galaxy?
Unlike spiral galaxies, elliptical galaxies are not supported by rotation. … Faster moving stars can
travel further before they are turned back by gravity
, resulting in the creation of the long axis of the elliptical galaxy in the direction these stars are moving.
What is the major difference between an elliptical galaxy and a spiral galaxy?
The major difference between spiral and elliptical galaxies is that
elliptical galaxies lack a significant disk component
, although both types have the halo component.
What galaxy do we live in?
We live in one of the arms of a large spiral galaxy called
the Milky Way
. The Sun and its planets (including Earth) lie in this quiet part of the galaxy, about half way out from the centre. 100 000 years to cross from one side to the other.
What is the age of an elliptical galaxy?
The accepted belief on the mass assembly history of massive elliptical galaxies based on their stellar population leads to an age
between 7 and 10 billion years old
.
What is the largest galaxy in our universe?
Located almost a billion light-years away,
IC 1101
is the single largest galaxy that has ever been found in the observable universe. Just how large is it? At its largest point, this galaxy extends about 2 million light-years from its core, and it has a mass of about 100 trillion stars.
What is the largest thing in the universe?
The largest known ‘object’ in the Universe is
the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall
. This is a ‘galactic filament’, a vast cluster of galaxies bound together by gravity, and it’s estimated to be about 10 billion light-years across!
Which is biggest galaxy or universe?
Galaxies come in many sizes.
The Milky Way
is big, but some galaxies, like our Andromeda Galaxy neighbor, are much larger. The universe is all of the galaxies – billions of them!
Why do the elliptical galaxies we see now have very very very little dust in them?
Most elliptical galaxies contain very little gas and dust
because they had already formed
.
What shape do elliptical galaxies have quizlet?
An elliptical galaxy shows no spiral structure and can vary from almost round (what Hubble called E0) to
almost cigar shaped
(called E7).
Where might the gas and dust in an elliptical galaxy come from?
Elliptical galaxies, such as M87 (left), have very little gas and dust. Because gas and dust are found
in the clouds that are the birthplaces of stars
, we should expect to see very few young stars in elliptical galaxies. In fact, elliptical galaxies contain primarily old, red stars (also known as Population II stars).
