File:IC_1101_in_Abell_2029_(hst_06228_03_wfpc2_f702w_pc).jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
elliptical galaxy
Sign in to savegalaxy having an approximately ellipsoidal shape and a smooth, nearly featureless brightness profile
An elliptical galaxy is a massive collection of stars shaped roughly like an ellipse or flattened sphere, with a smooth and featureless appearance when you look at it through a telescope. These galaxies are important to astronomers because their simple structure helps us understand how galaxies form and evolve across the universe.
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Encyclopedic overview
The large elliptical galaxy IC 1101
An elliptical galaxy is a type of galaxy with an approximately ellipsoidal shape and a smooth, nearly featureless image. They are one of the three main classes of galaxy described by Edwin Hubble in his Hubble sequence and 1936 work The Realm of the Nebulae, along with spiral and lenticular galaxies. Elliptical (E) galaxies are, together with lenticular galaxies (S0) with their large-scale disks, and ES galaxies with their intermediate scale disks, a subset of the "early-type" galaxy population.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “elliptical galaxy” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
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