How to Use elliptical galaxy in a Sentence

elliptical galaxy

noun
  • The first is a spiral galaxy; the second is an elliptical galaxy.
    — Joel Achenbach, Washington Post, 12 July 2024
  • Above the white elliptical galaxy to the left is a faint red arc, which is actually a very distant galaxy.
    — Ashley Strickland, CNN, 5 Oct. 2022
  • The gravity of the elliptical galaxy in the foreground has bent the more distant galaxy’s light.
    — Ashley Strickland, CNN, 5 Oct. 2022
  • These tend to be older, massive elliptical galaxies or those that are rapidly forming stars.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 7 Jan. 2020
  • The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy, but the researchers believed this one became an elliptical galaxy.
    — Ashley Strickland, CNN, 12 Aug. 2020
  • The large, pink-and-white blob just right of center is the elliptical galaxy M86, which is traveling at about three million miles per hour.
    — Carlyn Kranking, Smithsonian Magazine, 23 July 2024
  • The team determined this by looking at quiet elliptical galaxies that formed early in the universe that have changed little in modern epochs.
    — Robert Lea, Popular Mechanics, 22 Feb. 2023
  • It is located at the heart of a giant elliptical galaxy in the constellation of Virgo.
    — Paul Du Quenoy, Newsweek, 9 Dec. 2024
  • An elliptical galaxy and a spiral galaxy appear as one celestial body as a result of the effects of mass on spacetime, the fabric of the universe.
    — Robert Z. Pearlman, Space.com, 28 Mar. 2025
  • In 500 million years, the two cosmic systems will complete their merger to form a single elliptical galaxy.
    — Ashley Strickland, CNN, 10 Aug. 2022
  • The quasar is located in a giant elliptical galaxy in the constellation of Virgo and is one of the closest to Earth.
    — Robert Lea, Popular Mechanics, 13 June 2023
  • The unique signature of a blazar is a giant elliptical galaxy with two jets emitting light and particles, moving close to the speed of light along the axis of the black hole's rotation.
    — Ashley Strickland, CNN, 2 Oct. 2019
  • The light from a background galaxy, almost perfectly aligned with the elliptical galaxy and our line of sight, is lensed into an almost complete ring around the foreground galaxy.
    — Keith Cooper, Space.com, 13 Oct. 2025
  • That end result will convert the two spiral galaxies into one spheroidal elliptical galaxy, empty of almost all of its star-forming gas.
    — Nola Taylor Tillman, Discover Magazine, 8 Feb. 2022
  • Scientists usually expect the central bulges of elliptical galaxies to form rapidly and thus be dominated by low-mass stars.
    — Robert Lea, Space.com, 14 Apr. 2026
  • The very first black hole ever directly imaged was at the center of the giant elliptical galaxy, Messier 87, which sits at the heart of this galaxy cluster.
    — Ethan Siegel, Big Think, 2 Oct. 2025
  • For more than a century, astronomers have marveled at the brilliant jet of matter blasting from the heart of the giant elliptical galaxy M87.
    — Sharmila Kuthunur, Space.com, 2 Oct. 2025
  • The first scenario ever developed that could successfully explain elliptical galaxy formation has also been one of the most resilient.
    — Ethan Siegel, Forbes, 11 May 2021
  • Taken together, these observations revealed a blazar - a giant elliptical galaxy with a spinning supermassive black hole at its core.
    — Sarah Kaplan, chicagotribune.com, 12 July 2018
  • Taken together, these observations revealed a blazar – a giant elliptical galaxy with a spinning supermassive black hole at its core.
    — Author: Sarah Kaplan, Anchorage Daily News, 12 July 2018
  • This is the most spectacular form of gravitational lensing in which the gravity of a foreground object — in this case a massive elliptical galaxy — is warping space.
    — Keith Cooper, Space.com, 13 Oct. 2025
  • In crowded environments like galaxy clusters, these elliptical galaxies can collide and merge again to form an even larger elliptical galaxy.
    — Erika K. Carlson, Discover Magazine, 5 Dec. 2019
  • To test this possibility, Farrah and his colleagues studied elliptical galaxies, which contain black holes with millions or billions of times the sun’s mass in their centers.
    — Byadam Mann, science.org, 13 Feb. 2023
  • On the far right side, a giant elliptical galaxy appears to have a stream that connects it to a group of galaxies that exhibit spiral and disk-like features, with stellar streams abounding in that galaxy group or cluster.
    — Big Think, 4 Nov. 2025
  • Just last year, astronomers published the first-ever picture of a black hole and its event horizon, a 7 billion-solar-mass beast at the center of the M87 elliptical galaxy.
    — Chris Impey, CNN, 31 Oct. 2021
  • Just last year, astronomers published the first-ever picture of a black hole and its event horizon, a 7-billion-solar-mass beast at the center of the M87 elliptical galaxy.
    — Chris Impey, The Conversation, 30 Oct. 2020
  • The fields have a similar structure to those around the black hole at the center of Messier 87, a massive elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo.
    — Will Sullivan, Smithsonian Magazine, 27 Mar. 2024
  • More than 50 million light-years away, in the heart of a giant elliptical galaxy called Messier 87, a gargantuan beast is devouring anything that strays too near.
    — National Geographic, 10 Apr. 2019
  • Unlike spiral galaxies like the Milky Way, with their distinct structures of winding spiral arms, elliptical galaxies are rather shapeless.
    — Tereza Pultarova, Space.com, 2 Jan. 2025
  • An unusual elliptical galaxy with a history of absorbing smaller galaxies appears to be approaching its next target.
    — Samantha Mathewson, Space.com, 23 Feb. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'elliptical galaxy.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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