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# galaxy

«galaxy» in Mova's school dictionary: **a huge group of billions of stars, gas and dust held…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

noun (a galaxy, galaxies; the Galaxy = the Milky Way)

### meaning for a pupil

1) A galaxy is a huge group of billions of stars, gas and dust held together by gravity. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/G/galaxy/#m1)

2) Our galaxy is called the Milky Way; the Sun is one of its stars. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/G/galaxy/#m2)

3) Informally, «a galaxy of» means a large group of famous or bright people or things. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/G/galaxy/#m3)

### sense in the lessons

In science lessons we learn that the Earth orbits the Sun, the Sun is a star in the Milky Way galaxy, and the universe holds billions of galaxies. Galaxies can be spiral, elliptical or irregular. On a dark night away from city lights you can see the Milky Way as a pale band across the sky. Phrases: «spiral galaxy», «our galaxy», «the Milky Way galaxy», «a galaxy far, far away».

### examples

- The Sun is one star in the Milky Way galaxy. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/G/galaxy/#x1)
- There are billions of galaxies in the universe. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/G/galaxy/#x2)
- The Andromeda Galaxy is our nearest big neighbour. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/G/galaxy/#x3)
- A spiral galaxy looks like a whirlpool of stars. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/G/galaxy/#x4)
- Light from distant galaxies takes millions of years to reach us. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/G/galaxy/#x5)
- On a dark night we saw our galaxy as a misty band. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/G/galaxy/#x6)
- The film was set in a faraway galaxy. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/G/galaxy/#x7)
- The show had a galaxy of stars. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/G/galaxy/#x8)

### note

Plural: galaxies (y → ies). Galaxy ≠ solar system: a solar system is one star with its planets; a galaxy has billions of stars. Universe is everything, including all galaxies. Numbers in astronomy are enormous: the Milky Way has about 100–400 billion stars.

### In the corpora

- [The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy, with a bar of stars across its centre and spiral arms curling out from it.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/23-the-milky-way/6/)
- [The Sun lies about 26,000 light years from the galaxy's centre, in a smaller arm called the Orion Spur.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/23-the-milky-way/8/)
- [The Sun takes about 230 million years to go once round the centre of the galaxy, a "galactic year".](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/23-the-milky-way/9/)
- [The word galaxy comes from the Greek word for milk, and the Milky Way was named for its pale milky look.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/23-the-milky-way/11/)
- [The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are two small galaxies near ours, seen as misty patches in the southern sky.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/23-the-milky-way/14/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «galaxy» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/G/galaxy/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.