Spiral Galaxy Facts for Kids

A Picture of a Spiral Galaxy
  • Common Name: Spiral galaxy
  • Hubble Sequence Class: Spiral
  • Denotes: Sa, Sb, Sc, SBa, SBb or SBc
  • Appearance Characteristics: Spiral Shaped, Like a Whirlpool
  • Example Galaxies: Milky Way and Andromeda

15 Spiral Galaxy Facts for Kids

  1. A spiral galaxy is a type of galaxy on the Hubble sequence classification scheme.
  2. There are six main types of spiral galaxies, and they are Sa, Sb, Sc, SBa, SBb and SBc.
  3. A spiral galaxy has a spiral like structure and will have well-defined arms extending outwards.
  4. All spiral galaxies have a supermassive black hole in the very center of their bulge.
  5. A spiral galaxy is called a grand design spiral galaxy when it has prominent, well-defined arms.
  6. A spiral galaxy is called a barred spiral galaxy when it has a centralized bar-shaped structured that contains stars.
  7. It’s estimated that spiral galaxies and irregular galaxies make up to 60% of the galaxies in the observable universe.
  8. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is a barred spiral galaxy and the home of our Solar System.
  9. The oldest spiral galaxy in the known universe is BX422, with an estimated age of 11 billion years old.
  10. An example of a Sa spiral galaxy is the Andromeda Galaxy, also known as NGC 224.
  11. An example of a Sb spiral galaxy is PGC 69533, also known as UGC 12158.
  12. An example of a Sc spiral galaxy is BX442.
  13. An example of a SBa spiral galaxy is NGC 4314.
  14. An example of a SBb spiral galaxy is Messier 95, also known as NGC 3351.
  15. An example of a SBc spiral galaxy is NGC 3953.

Additional Resources with Spiral Galaxy Facts

About the author
Facts Editor

This is an author profile for articles that are created from a collaborative effort. It is not uncommon that articles on this site were either written, researched or fact checked by several authors and team members. So this author profile will be displayed to reflect that. Our team of editors, writers and fact checkers do extensive research before publishing articles on the site, and we do our best to provide the most accurate information possible.