Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A cloud of gas, primarily hydrogen, that is forming a galaxy or has sufficient mass to eventually form a galaxy.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A cloud of gas which is starting to form a galaxy.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

proto- +‎ galaxy

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Examples

  • But in the October 2 issue of Nature, the astronomers report that the magnetic field they measured in this distant "protogalaxy" is at least 10 times greater than the average value in the Milky Way.

    unknown title 2008

  • Because this formation is happening on a large physical scale since galaxies are on the scale of tens or hundreds of thousands of light-years across, some parts of the protogalaxy will be more dense than others, which means the shock waves will be unevenly distributed.

    Wired Top Stories Ars Technica 2012

  • The relatively rapid gravitational collapse sends shock waves through the gas, blowing some of it away from the protogalaxy, but driving star formation in the process.

    Wired Top Stories Ars Technica 2012

  • The latest simulations of these events have found that when small supermassive black holes merge the resulting black hole receives an average kick of about 200 kilometers per second, which is fast enough to sling it out of a protogalaxy.

    PhysOrg.com - latest science and technology news stories 2009

  • The world's biggest steerable radio telescope in Green Bank (West Virginia) directly measured the field of protogalaxy DLA-3C286.

    A Babe in the Universe 2008

  • Detected in a distant protogalaxy, it measures at least 10 times greater than the

    SPACE.com 2008

  • The young protogalaxy they probed, DLA-3C286, is located in a region of the northern sky that is directly overhead during the spring in the northern hemisphere.

    SPACE.com 2008

  • I’m part of that protogalaxy five billion light years away and of that cigarette butt in Cleveland.

    Last Words George Carlin 2009

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