What is the definition of an elliptical galaxy?
Elliptical galaxies are named because of their shapes. Elliptical galaxies range from circular (remember, a circle is an ellipse!) to long, narrow, and cigar-shaped.and it is now quite safe from observation that they are usually triaxial * Elliptical galaxies have a large range of sizes. The largest elliptical galaxies can be over a million light-years in diameter. The smallest “dwarf elliptical” galaxies are less than one-tenth the size of the Milky Way! Elliptical galaxies have very little gas and dust. Since stars form from gas, little star formation occurs in elliptical galaxies. Most of their stars are old and red They have little or no global angular momentum, i.e. do not rotate as a whole (of course, the stars still orbit the centers of these galaxies, but the orbits are statistically oriented so that only little net orbital angular momentum sums up). Normally, elliptical galaxies contain very little or no interstellar matter, and consist of old population II stars only: They ap
