Have no particular shape. They are among the smallest galaxies and are full of gas and dust. Having a lot of gas and dust means that these galaxies have a lot of star formation going on within them. This can make them very bright. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are examples of irregular galaxies. They are two small galaxies which orbit around our own Milky Way Galaxy. About 20% of all galaxies are irregulars.
Such as the Milky Way, consist of a flat disk with a bulging center and surrounding spiral arms. The galaxy's disk includes stars, planets, dust, and gas—all of which rotate around the galactic center in a regular manner.Some spiral galaxies obtain even more interesting shapes that earn them descriptive names, such as sombrero galaxies.
Are shaped as their name suggests. They are generally round but stretch longer along one axis than along the other. They may be nearly circular or so elongated that they take on a cigarlike appearance. Elliptical galaxies contain many older stars, up to one trillion, but little dust and other interstellar matter. Their stars orbit the galactic center, like those in the disks of spiral galaxies, but they do so in more random directions.
Have no particular shape. They are among the smallest galaxies and are full of gas and dust. Having a lot of gas and dust means that these galaxies have a lot of star formation going on within them. This can make them very bright. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are examples of irregular galaxies. They are two small galaxies which orbit around our own Milky Way Galaxy. About 20% of all galaxies are irregulars.
Galaxies to Discuss
The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is the closest large galaxy to the Milky Way and is one of a few galaxies that can be seen unaided from the Earth.
Other Galaxies
ANTENNAE GALAXIES
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A Hubble Space Telescope image shows unprecedented detail of the Antennae galaxies, an intense star-forming region created when two galaxies began to collide some 200 million to 300 million years ago. The bright, blue-white areas show newly formed stars surrounded by clouds of hydrogen, which are colored pink. A similar collision is expected between our galaxy, the Milky Way, and the nearby Andromeda galaxy in several billion years.
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CARTWHEEL GALAXY
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This false-color view of the Cartwheel galaxy was created by combining images captured by four space telescopes: Galaxy Evolution Explorer,Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope, and Chandra X-ray Observatory. Astronomers think a smaller galaxy, possibly one of two galaxies seen here (bottom left), passed through the center of the Cartwheel galaxy about 100 million years ago.
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LARGE MAGELLANIC CLOUD
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Sheets of debris from an exploded star swirl in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) galaxy in this Hubble Space Telescope image. At a distance of about 180,000 light-years, the LMC galaxy is a relatively close neighbor of the Milky Way. It can be spotted from the Earth's Southern Hemisphere without a telescope.
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BLACK EYE GALAXY
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The Black Eye or Evil Eye galaxy gets its nicknames from the band of light-absorbing dust that appears in front of the star system's bright center in this Hubble Space Telescope image. Messier 64, as the Black Eye galaxy is more formally known, is thought to have taken on its ominous appearance after it collided with another galaxy perhaps a billion years ago.
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MERGING GALAXIES
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Two merging galaxies located 140 million light-years from Earth resemble a giant celestial mask in this false-color image. The ice-blue eyes are actually the galaxies' cores, and the mask is their spiral arms. The galaxies, called NGC 2207 and IC 2163, began their gravitational tango about 40 million years ago and will eventually meld into one.
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CIGAR GALAXY
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An infrared image of the Messier 82 galaxy, nicknamed the "Cigar galaxy," shows the formation's central plane in blue and white, with a halo of smoky dust in red. This red cloud, composed of hydrocarbon dust similar to car exhaust, is being blown out into space by the galaxy's millions of young stars.
