SPIRAL GALAXY

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A galaxy having a spiral structure; arms containing younger stars spiral out from old stars at the center

Synonyms:

spiral galaxy; spiral nebula

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Hypernyms ("spiral galaxy" is a kind of...):

extragalactic nebula; galaxy ((astronomy) a collection of star systems; any of the billions of systems each having many stars and nebulae and dust)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "spiral galaxy"):

Andromeda galaxy (a spiral galaxy in the constellation of Andromeda that is visible to the naked eye)

Credits

Context examples:

New images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show a spiral galaxy being stripped of its gas as it plunges toward the cluster’s center.

(Hubble Sees Plunging Galaxy Losing Its Gas, NASA)

While these tilted objects begin to reveal the three-dimensional structure within their spiral arms, fully understanding the overall shape of a spiral galaxy requires an edge-on view — such as this one of NGC 1055.

(A Galaxy on the Edge, ESO)

Using the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array radio telescope, a team of astronomers has captured for the first time an image of large-scale, coherent, magnetic fields in the halo of a faraway spiral galaxy, confirming theoretical modeling of how galaxies generate magnetic fields and potentially increasing knowledge of how galaxies form and evolve.

(Giant magnetic ropes seen in Whale Galaxy's halo, National Science Foundation)