What constitutes a large galaxy as opposed to a small one?

Answer 1

you can send anything into space to find the edge

but it will eventually end up where it started

it is impossible to find the edge of the universe

only scientists can predict the size of the universe

Answer 2

The universe is so, extremely giant, it's pretty much impossible to actually imagine how big it really is. The best thing to do is to start with something small and work up from there; so let's start with the Earth. Earth may seem a giant place to us humans, but no where near in size to the universe. But, at approximate, the Earth is about 8,000 miles wide. If you drove a transglobal tunnel down through the middle of the Earth (which is not possible, but just imagine it) at a non - stop speed of 60mph, then you'd pop out the other side in about 5.5 days. Which isn't that long with what will come up. Now, lets try the distance to the Earth to our Moon. Every month, the Moon will get further and closer away from us. But, on average, the distance from Earth to Moon is 240,000 miles. Travelling at a speed of 60mph, you'd get to the Moon in about 168 days, which is quite long. Now, lets try something even longer; the Earth to the Sun. This distance is about 92 million miles, and would take you about 176 years to get there by 60mph. Now, to cross our galaxy, the Milky Way. By going at 60mph, you'd have to travel 621 million billion miles to cross the Milky Way. It would take 1 million billion (or, to be more precise, 1,181,401,000,000,000) years to accomplish. So, this tells us that a space car would be pretty cool, but 60mph is a pathetic speed for travelling across space. So, we'll think of something super - duper fast; light. The speed of light can travel a mind - blowing 186,000 miles in 1 second, at approximate. We're talking about a speed so fast it could travel 6 trillion miles if it kept on moving at it's normal speed for 1 year. This is known as a 'Light year'. But, even with our super fast speed of light travel, it'd take it about 100,000 years at approximate to cross the Milky Way. And, to move onto our universe. With out most powerful telescopes, we can measure that the universe is 15 billion Light years in every direction. So, at the speed of light, it'd still take at least 30 billion years to cross the universe.

For a conclusion, it's pretty much impossible to measure out the proper size of the universe.
It never ever ends. It goes on and on and on ........
It is theorized to be infinite but there is no way to know with our technology because we can only see a certain distance using different types of technology.

Answer 3

Well....The stellar disk of the Milky Way galaxy is approximately 100,000 light years in diameter and about 1,000 light years in thickness.

The entire gaseous cloud is around 10,000 light years thick, increasing to 30,000 light years at the nucleus, and this region extends to about 180,000 light years in total width.

The Milky Way galaxy contains between 200 and 400 billion stars. Most of the stars are on curved "arms" that rotate around the center about once every 250 million Earth years. The Earth is in the Orion Arm of the galaxy, approximately 25000 light-years from the center, or about halfway to the rim.

Answer 4

Per wikipedia: The stellar disk of the Milky Way galaxy is approximately 100,000 light-years in diameter, and is believed to be, on average, about 1,000 light-years thick. If you include the gaseous cloud outside of the galaxy proper, it is about 180,000 light-years. In English units, one light year is about 5.9 x 1012 miles, so the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy is about 590 x 1015 miles in diameter, or 590,000,000,000,000,000 miles.

If the question was posed by my kid, back when he was 5 or 6 and really into that sort of thing, my answer would be "As big as your mind and imagination wants it to be" which, in my mind, is a lot bigger than 590x 1015 miles.

Answer 5

The Milky Way is estimated to be between 100,000 and 120,000 light years in diameter.

1 light year is approximately 6 trillion (6,000,000,000,000) miles or approx 10 trillion (10,000,000,000,000) km.

Answer 6

The galaxy cluster is a group (a cluster) of galaxies. In that light, a galaxy cluster is much larger. Note that galaxies come in different sizes, and so do the clusters. But it is doubtful that even the largest galaxy is as large as a galaxy cluster. Use the link below for more information.

Answer 7

Our Milky Way has a diameter of 100,000 light-years, and contains somewhere between 200-400 billion stars. Other galaxies can have anywhere from about 10 million stars to about 100 trillion stars; a dwarf galaxy is much smaller than the Milky Way, while the largest galaxies can have a diameter of several hundred thousand light-years.

Answer 8

As there is no such thing as a "typical" galaxy it is difficult to answer.

Given that our own Milky Way Galaxy is a "normal" spiral galaxy, one can only use these details as a "typical" galaxy.

Our galaxy is about 100,000 light years across and about 1,000 light years thick.

Answer 9

The Milky Way has a diameter of about 100,000 light-years. Each light-year is the distance light travels in a year, at 300,000 km/sec - so a light-year is about 9.5 million million kilometers.

Our galaxy is shaped like a disk or two dinner plates stacked facing each other. The central hub is about ten thousand light years thick, but out where we are the galaxy thins to three thousand light years wide.

100,000 light years across. That is close to 600,000,000,000,000,000 (six hundred quadrillion) miles, or 9x1020 meters.

Answer 10

No. The term "universe" can be a slippery concept to try and get ahold of, but here's

a working definition: The "universe" is all of the time and space that ever did, does,

and will exist, as well as all the matter and energy in it. In another word, the "universe"

means "everything". So, anything and everything you can think of is in the universe,

and nothing is bigger than it. Except perhaps the One who Created it, but that discussion

belongs in other categories of questions.

Next to that, a mere "galaxy" is puny. A "galaxy" is just a few hundred billion stars,

and there are probaly several billion galaxies in the universe, so you can see that

a galaxy doesn't amount to much at all. (? ! ?)