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Elliptical Galaxy

General Information

1. Elliptical galaxies are uniform in appearance and have shapes that range from spherical to elongated (like a football).

2. Elliptical galaxies are made up of old stars. They do not contain any gas and dust which are the building blocks for new stars. Therefore, they often appear yellow-red.

3. The smallest known galaxies are elliptical galaxies. They are referred to as dwarf ellipticals and may contain only a few million stars. Some are so devoid of stars that you can see through their nucleus.

4. The largest galaxies are also ellipticals. They are referred to as giant elliptical galaxies and may contain trillions of stars.

Lenticular Galaxy

1. Lenticular galaxies, another type of galaxy, are often mistakenly classified as elliptical galaxies.

   a. Lenticular galaxies are like spiral galaxies, but without any obvious structure.

   b. They also have no gas or dust – they used them up long ago – and are also made up of old stars.

   c. Galaxies are positioned at all angles to us, so it would be easy to mistake a face on lenticular galaxy for an elliptical galaxy.

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References

Item	Updated	Notes
Last reviewed	2003-01-13	All looks OK