In perhaps an unintended degree of verisimilitude to the actual shuttle launch experience, a lot of the time on the Shuttle Launch Experience ride is spent waiting. As you wait on the gantry, monitors show a video where former astronauts describe what it was like for them to fly on the shuttle.
The galaxy we live in, called the Milky Way Galaxy, is a barred spiral galaxy composed of at least 100 billion stars. It is approximately 100,000 light years across and about 1000 light years thick. It has a central bulge that is about 10,000 light years in diameter.
The second grouping includes the Spiral galaxies, such as our very own Milky Way (more specifically, ours is a barred spiral galaxy). This type of galaxy is the most commonly observed in the Universe, making up 60% to 75% of all galaxies ever found. Now we approach the largest galaxies â the Ellipticals.