A galaxy is a principal component of our universe. It is made up of stars, an interstellar medium of gas and dust and a large number of stars, ranging from a few tens of million to as many as a trillion. Stars may congregate in clusters, associations and in spiral arms. Galaxies are also thought to contain vast amounts of dark matter, extending beyond the distribution of stars.  Galaxies are held together by gravity including that due to the dark matter. Most galaxies are 1,000 to 100,000 parsecs (3000 to 300,000 light-years) in diameter and are usually separated by distances on the order of millions of parsecs. There are about 100 billion galaxies in the visible Universe. When capitalized, Galaxy refers to our own Milky Way Galaxy.

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