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 …

Jan 7, 2026 · 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...

Jan 18, 2024 · A galaxy is a concentration of millions or billions of stars, gas clouds and pockets of dust, all bound by gravity and swathed in a cocoon of mysterious dark matter.

Nov 8, 2023 · A galaxy is a large system of stars, gas (mostly hydrogen), dust and dark matter that orbits a common center and is bound together by gravity — you can think of them as "island universes."

May 9, 2025 · Very generally speaking, galaxies are tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of light-years across and have millions to several trillions of stars. Our Milky Way, for example, is about...

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 …

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 …