The Space Place :: Make a Galactic Mobile

Make a Galactic Mobile

A galaxy is a grouping of stars. All but a few stars in the universe live in galaxies. Our Sun is just one of at least 200 billion stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy.

With our best telescopes, we can look deep into space and see billions of galaxies. Galaxies come in all different shapes. Some are spiral shaped like our own Milky Way. Some are like a circle or a flattened circle. Others seem to have no particular shape at all.

Make your own collection of beautiful galaxies. Suspend them on a mobile so they turn and sparkle in the wind.

Here's how to make your Galactic Mobile.

How did the galaxies get to be such a variety of shapes?

Well, we don't know. But with the Galaxy Evolution Explorer spacecraft, or GALEX, we will learn much more about stars and galaxies.

GALEX was launched into orbit around Earth on April 28, 2003. It uses its advanced instruments to peer outward, deep into the universe. It collects data that is helping astronomers piece together the story of how stars and galaxies are formed and how they change over billions of years.

Find out about the unusual way GALEX was launched.