Galaxies are classified into elliptical, lenticular, and spiral (or barred spiral) galaxies. Galaxies with irregular shapes that do not fit into any categories are classified as irregular galaxies.

The Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of a highly irregular galaxy known as ESO 174-1 located about 11 million light-years from Earth.

However, not all spiral galaxies are created equal, as two recent images from the Hubble Space Telescope show. The image above shows galaxy NGC 3596, a neat and orderly spiral galaxy.

Galaxies come in many different variations, but astronomers classify them into four main types: spiral, elliptical, irregular and peculiar.

Scientists' simulation of the Supergalatic Plane show how collisions in dense star neighborhoods can smooth out swirling galaxies.

NGC 1156, while having characteristics of both a spiral and elliptical galaxy, is classified as an irregular galaxy. The irregular dwarf galaxy is located 25 million light-years from Earth in the ...

Classic spiral, barred spiral, and other types of galaxy shapes, lenticular, elliptical, and irregular, date back to the early 1900s when the study of galaxies was still in its infancy.

Astronomers have observed unusually shaped galaxies in a transitory phase of galactic evolution, often colliding or ...

The majority of the thousands of galaxies we’ve discovered out in the universe fit into relatively well-defined categories: spiral galaxies like our Milky Way, elliptical galaxies which are long ...

There are dozens of enormous armless galaxy clusters called elliptical galaxies in the Plane, but not nearly as many disk-shaped galaxies with spiral arms.