What is "elliptical galaxy"

n. A galaxy having a smooth, featureless light-profile. It is one of the three main classes of galaxies originally described by Edwin Hubble in his 1936 work “The Realm of the Nebulae”.

An elliptical galaxy is a type of galaxy having an approximately ellipsoidal shape and a smooth, nearly featureless brightness profile. Unlike flat spiral galaxies with organization and structure, they are more three-dimensional, without much structure, and their stars are in somewhat random orbits around the center. They are one of the three main classes of galaxy originally described by Edwin Hubble in his 1936 work The Realm of the Nebulae, along with spiral and lenticular galaxies. Elliptical galaxies range in shape from nearly spherical to highly flat and in size from tens of millions to over one hundred trillion stars. Originally Edwin Hubble hypothesized that elliptical galaxies evolved into spiral galaxies, which was later discovered to be false. Stars found inside of elliptical galaxies are much older than stars found in spiral galaxies.

Most elliptical galaxies are composed of older, low-mass stars, with a sparse interstellar medium and minimal star formation activity, and they tend to be surrounded by large numbers of globular clusters. Elliptical galaxies are believed to make up approximately 10–15% of galaxies in the Virgo Supercluster, and they are not the dominant type of galaxy in the universe overall. They are preferentially found close to the centers of galaxy clusters. Elliptical galaxies are (together with lenticular galaxies) also called "early-type" galaxies (ETG), due to their location in the Hubble sequence, and are found to be less common in the early Universe.