A galaxy is a
huge collection of billions of stars and solar systems
that are billions of kilometres away from each other. Our solar system is in the Milky Way galaxy; on a clear and starry night, we can see the Milky Way galaxy as a broad, glowing band of soft, whitish light.
What is a galaxy Ducksters?
A galaxy is
a group of stars and other space stuff
. The stars tend to spin around a center of high gravity, sort of like the planets spin around the Sun in the Solar System. Galaxies are huge and can have trillions (way bigger than billions!) of stars. … Scientists think there are over 100 billion galaxies.
What defines a galaxy?
Galaxies are
sprawling systems of dust, gas, dark matter, and anywhere from a million to a trillion stars that are held together by gravity
. Nearly all large galaxies are thought to also contain supermassive black holes at their centers.
What is galaxy and its types?
There are four main categories of galaxies:
elliptical, spiral, barred spiral, and irregular
. These types of galaxies are further divided into subcategories while at the same time other types of galaxies exist based on their size and other unique features. … Around 77% of the galaxies observed by man are spiral galaxies.
What are the 4 types of galaxy?
Galaxies 101
The smallest of galaxies contain a “mere” few hundred million stars while the largest galaxies contain up to one hundred trillion stars! Scientists have been able to segment galaxies into 4 main types:
spiral, elliptical, peculiar, and irregular
.
What is bigger than a galaxy?
From largest to smallest they are: Universe, galaxy, solar system, star, planet, moon and
asteroid
.
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.
How old is our galaxy?
Astronomers believe that our own Milky Way galaxy is
approximately 13.6 billion years old
. The newest galaxy we know of formed only about 500 million years ago.
How many galaxies are in space?
While NASA previously determined that there were around
two trillion galaxies
in the universe, new findings say the number is more likely hundreds of billions. While NASA previously determined that there were around two trillion galaxies in the universe, new findings say the number is more likely hundreds of billions.
How do you identify a galaxy?
Galaxy classification
Galaxies are classified by
shape
. There are three general types: elliptical, spiral, and irregular. Perhaps the most familiar kind of galaxy are spiral galaxies. They have a distinctive shape with spiral arms in a relatively flat disk and a central “bulge”.
What is the rarest type of galaxy?
Astronomers recently mapped the rarest type of galaxy ever found:
an elliptical galaxy
sporting rings of young stars. Most galaxies, including our own Milky Way, are spiral or elliptical. But this recently mapped galaxy, called PGC 1000714, is unique.
What is the youngest type of galaxy?
GN-z11
is the youngest and most distant galaxy scientists have observed. This video zooms to its location, some 32 billion light-years away. GN-z11 is 13.4 billion years old and formed 400 million years after the Big Bang. Its irregular shape is typical for galaxies of that time period.
How does galaxy look like?
What does our Galaxy look like? We live in the Milky Way Galaxy, which is a collection of stars, gas, dust, and a supermassive black hole at it's very center. Our Galaxy is a spiral galaxy, which are rotating structures that are flat (disk-like) like
a DVD
when looked upon edge-on.
What is the Earth's galaxy called?
The Milky Way
is a huge collection of stars, dust and gas. It's called a spiral galaxy because if you could view it from the top or bottom, it would look like a spinning pinwheel. The Sun is located on one of the spiral arms, about 25,000 light-years away from the center of the galaxy.
Can we go to another galaxy?
The technology required to travel between galaxies is far beyond humanity's present capabilities, and currently only the subject of speculation, hypothesis, and science fiction. However, theoretically speaking,
there is nothing to conclusively indicate that intergalactic travel is impossible
.
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!
