The universe is made up of many islands of stars which we have termed as galaxies. The galaxy in which the earth, sun, numerous other stars and other planets are located is known as the Milky Way galaxy. For light to travel from one end of our galaxy to another, it takes about 100 thousand years. Its been scientifically calculated that light travels about 6 million million miles in one single year.

In recent times, with the help of advanced telescopes, astronomers have found numerous other galaxies present beyond our own. Galaxies have been classified into three types by our scientists. The galaxies which are formed in a spiral shape are termed as spiral galaxies. Our Milky Way galaxy is a spiral shaped galaxy. The other spiral galaxy which is found near our Milky Way galaxy is about 2 million light-years away. This is found in the constellation known as Andromeda.

Nearly seventeen percent of the brightly lit galaxies that have been discovered are elliptical in shape and are known as elliptical galaxies. A stretched-out circular shape is called an ellipse. Its also been observed that these galaxies comprise mostly of stars and they seem to have very minimal and at times no gas or dust. There are galaxies which are formed without any shape and are known as irregular galaxies. Such galaxies comprise of stars, gas and dust particles. There are two galaxies near the Milky Way galaxy and these are irregular galaxies.

Dwarf galaxies are very small galaxies and the smallest of these galaxies are only a few hundred light-years away from the Milky Way galaxy. These dwarf galaxies comprise of very few thousand stars and it has been observed that there could me more number of dwarf galaxies than larger ones in the universe.

Galaxies lie thousands of light-years away from each other and they usually form in clusters or groups that comprise of several tens to thousands of galaxies. We have till date discovered galaxies that lie billions of light years away from our Milky Way galaxy. They are so farther away from us that we cannot determine their vastness. So the number of galaxies that are present in our universe will always remain a mystery and will also remain unsolved. This would probably remain a question that can never be answered.