A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter bound together by gravity. [1][2] The word is derived from the Greek galaxias (γαλαξίας), literally 'milky', a reference to …

Nov 27, 2025 · A galaxy is any of the systems of stars and interstellar matter that make up the universe. Many such assemblages are so enormous that they contain hundreds of billions of stars. Galaxies …

May 2, 2025 · Galaxies consist of stars, planets, and vast clouds of gas and dust, all bound together by gravity. The largest contain trillions of stars and can be more than a million light-years across. The …

Mar 19, 2025 · The Basics: What Is a Galaxy, Really? At its core, a galaxy is a massive, gravitationally bound system consisting of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter.

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...

Galaxies are collections of stars, dust, gas, and dark matter, which are bound together by the gravitational attraction that results from their own mass. A small dwarf galaxy contains a few million …

Sep 25, 2025 · What Is a Galaxy? The Short Answer: A galaxy is a huge collection of gas, dust, and billions of stars and their solar systems, all held together by gravity. We live on a planet called Earth …

The first attempts at systematic catalogues of galaxies were made in the 1960s, with the Catalogue of Galaxies and Clusters of Galaxies listing 29,418 galaxies and galaxy clusters, and with the …

Nov 27, 2025 · Learn about the three general types of galaxies: spiral, elliptical, and irregular. Almost all current systems of galaxy classification are outgrowths of the initial scheme proposed by the …

Dec 8, 2025 · Our Milky Way is one example of a broad class of galaxies defined by the presence of spiral arms. These galaxies resemble giant rotating pinwheels with a pancake-like disk of stars and a …