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The Question
(Submitted January 30, 2002)
I was woundering what the most common type of galaxy is.
I have searched different scorces and they all say different things. Some
say spiral, some say eliptical.
The Answer
The references I was able to find all agree that elliptical galaxies are
the most common, accounting for about 60 percent of all galaxies.
Perhaps what some of the references were referring to the numbers
of known galaxies. Since sprial galaxies tend to be brighter than
ellipticals, more of them have been named and cataloged. But in a given
region of the sky astronomers see more ellipticals, so they infer that
ellipticals are more common everywhere.
Cheers,
Hans Krimm for "Ask a High-Energy Astronomer"
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