Space nasa galaxy 3. At the center of the spiral a lot of energy and occasionally. The word galaxy is derived from the greek galaxias galaxias literally milky a reference to the milky waygalaxies range in size from dwarfs with just a few hundred million 10 8 stars to giants with one hundred trillion 10 14 stars each orbiting its galaxys center. A galaxy is a gravitationally bound system of stars stellar remnants interstellar gas dust and dark matter.