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Galaxies · 15 guides

Galaxies

From our Milky Way to the giants of the Virgo Cluster.

Start with The Milky Way A hundred billion stars, and every human who ever lived, in one spiral: our home galaxy.

Galaxy

The Andromeda Galaxy The most distant thing you can see with your naked eye is our giant neighbor.

Galaxy

The Triangulum Galaxy The Local Group's third spiral. Seen face-on, it is a pinwheel bursting with newborn stars.

Galaxy

Large Magellanic Cloud The Milky Way's brightest companion is a southern-sky galaxy you can see like a detached cloud.

Galaxy

Messier 87 A giant elliptical galaxy with the first black hole humanity ever photographed.

Galaxy

Small Magellanic Cloud The Milky Way's second cloud. This galaxy is being pulled apart before our eyes.

Galaxy

The Whirlpool Galaxy The first spiral humanity ever saw, caught mid-embrace with a smaller galaxy.

Galaxy

The Sombrero Galaxy A luminous hat brim in Virgo: bulge, dust lane, and a billion-sun black hole.

Galaxy

Centaurus A The nearest feeding giant is a galaxy wearing its last meal.

Galaxy

The Pinwheel Galaxy Bigger than the Milky Way and lit by stellar nurseries, this giant spiral is seen face-on.

Galaxy

The Antennae Galaxies Two galaxies mid-collision. The Milky Way's own future looks like this.

Galaxy

The Cartwheel Galaxy This cosmic bullseye is the wreckage of a galaxy shot through the heart.

Galaxy

The Sculptor Galaxy The nearest galaxy caught in a furious burst of star birth, known as the Silver Coin.

Galaxy

Bode's Galaxy A textbook spiral locked in a gravitational duel with its cigar-shaped neighbor.

Galaxy

IC 1101 One of the largest galaxies known, this giant grew fat on a billion years of mergers.

15 in-depth guides, with every fact labeled and sourced. Star any of them to build your own collection.

Looking for something we haven’t written up yet? The exoplanet database holds thousands more worlds, and Ask the Atlas can answer from everything we have.