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It may look like a small, fuzzy, cottonball-like smudge—at
least in smaller telescopes—but the Giant Elliptical Galaxy
M87, at a distance of 60 million light years, is greater
than it looks. Elliptical galaxies are so named—as with all
types of galaxies—because of their shape. Ellipticals lack
the spiral, flat disk structures of Spiral Galaxies, and are
instead smooth oval or even spherical shapes. M87 is a
monster in size: 125,000 light years across (compared to
the Milky Way’s 100,000 light years). And because it is
egg-like in dimensions, and not a flat disk, it fills an
even greater volume of space with its stars. There are
maybe trillions of stars in this galaxy!
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