Galaxies - Star Cities

A diagram which shows the many types of galaxies and their special names Click on image for full size (29K JPEG) When we look up at the night sky, we notice that there are many stars in our sky. Stars must like to live together in star cities - galaxies. Our city of stars is called the Milky Way, and it is home to 100 billion stars, including the Sun. The stars stay together because of the force of gravity. There are as many other galaxies in our universe as there are stars in our Galaxy! Galaxies come in different shapes and sizes. They can be circular or shaped like an egg (elliptical), or appear as pretty pinwheels (spirals). Some galaxies don't seem to fit into these groups, so they are called irregulars.

A Matter of Scale - interactive showing the sizes of things, from very tiny to huge - from NSF

Last modified prior to September, 2000 by the Windows Team

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