Spiral galaxies form a class of galaxy originally described by Edwin Hubble in his 1936 work

The Realm of the Nebulae[1] and, as such, form part of the Hubble sequence. Most spiral galaxies
consist of a flat, rotating disk containing stars, gas and dust, and a central concentration of stars
known as the bulge. These are often surrounded by a much fainter halo of stars, many of which
reside in globular clusters.

Spiral galaxies are named by their spiral structures that extend from the center into the galactic
disc. The spiral arms are sites of ongoing star formation and are brighter than the surrounding
disc because of the young, hot OB stars that inhabit them.

Roughly two-thirds of all spirals are observed to have an additional component in the form of a
bar-like structure,[2] extending from the central bulge, at the ends of which the spiral arms begin.
The proportion of barred spirals relative to their barless cousins has likely changed over the
history of the Universe, with only about 10% containing bars about 8 billion years ago, to
roughly a quarter 2.5 billion years ago, until present, where over two-thirds of the galaxies in the
visible universe (Hubble volume) have bars.[3]

Our own Milky Way is a barred spiral, although the bar itself is difficult to observe from the
Earth's current position within the galactic disc.[4] The most convincing evidence for the stars
forming a bar in the galactic center comes from several recent surveys, including the Spitzer
Space Telescope.[5]

Together with irregular galaxies, spiral galaxies make up approximately 60% of galaxies in
today's universe.[6] They are mostly found in low-density regions and are rare in the centers of
galaxy clusters.[7]

Spiral arms are regions of stars that extend from the center of spiral and barred spiral galaxies.
These long, thin regions resemble a spiral and thus give spiral galaxies their name. Naturally,
different classifications of spiral galaxies have distinct arm-structures. Sc and SBc galaxies, for
instance, have very "loose" arms, whereas Sa and SBa galaxies have tightly wrapped arms (with
reference to the Hubble sequence). Either way, spiral arms contain many young, blue stars (due
to the high mass density and the high rate of star formation), which make the arms so bright.

A bulge is a large, tightly packed group of stars. The term refers to the central group of stars
found in most spiral galaxies, often defined as the excess of stellar light above the inward
extrapolation of the outer (exponential) disk light.

Using the Hubble classification, the bulge of Sa galaxies is usually composed of Population II
stars, that are old, red stars with low metal content. Further, the bulge of Sa and SBa galaxies
tends to be large. In contrast, the bulges of Sc and SBc galaxies are much smaller[8] and are
composed of young, blue Population I stars. Some bulges have similar properties to those of
elliptical galaxies (scaled down to lower mass and luminosity); others simply appear as higher
density centers of disks, with properties similar to disk galaxies.
Many bulges are thought to host a supermassive black hole at their centers. Such black holes
have never been directly observed, but many indirect proofs exist. In our own galaxy, for
instance, the object called Sagittarius A* is believed to be a supermassive black hole.

The pioneer of studies of the rotation of the Galaxy and the formation of the spiral arms was
Bertil Lindblad in 1925. He realized that the idea of stars arranged permanently in a spiral shape
was untenable. Since the angular speed of rotation of the galactic disk varies with distance from
the centre of the galaxy (via a standard solar system type of gravitational model), a radial arm
(like a spoke) would quickly become curved as the galaxy rotates. The arm would, after a few
galactic rotations, become increasingly curved and wind around the galaxy ever tighter. This is
called the winding problem. Measurements in the late 1960s showed that the orbital velocity of
stars in spiral galaxies with respect to their distance from the galactic center is indeed higher
than expected from Newtonian dynamics but still cannot explain the stability of the spiral
structure.

The first acceptable theory for the spiral structure was devised by C. C. Lin and Frank Shu in
1964,[17] attempting to explain the large-scale structure of spirals in terms of a small-amplitude
wave propagating with fixed angular velocity, that revolves around the galaxy at a speed
different from that of the galaxy's gas and stars. They suggested that the spiral arms were
manifestations of spiral density waves – they assumed that the stars travel in slightly elliptical
orbits, and that the orientations of their orbits is correlated i.e. the ellipses vary in their
orientation (one to another) in a smooth way with increasing distance from the galactic center.
This is illustrated in the diagram to the right. It is clear that the elliptical orbits come close
together in certain areas to give the effect of arms. Stars therefore do not remain forever in the
position that we now see them in, but pass through the arms as they travel in their orbits