The largest galaxies are supergiant ellipticals, or type-cD galaxies. Elliptical galaxies vary greatly in both size and mass with diameters ranging from 3,000 light years to more than 700,000 light years, and masses from 105 to nearly 1013 solar masses. This range is much broader for this galaxy type than for any other. The smallest, the dwarf elliptical galaxies, may be no larger than a typical globular cluster, but contain a considerable amount of dark matter not present in clusters. Most of these small galaxies may not be related to other ellipticals.thumb|The brilliant central object is the supergiant elliptical galaxy SDSS J142347.87+240442.4, the dominant member of the galaxy cluster MACS J1423.8+2404. It has a diameter of 380,000 light-years. Note the gravitational lensing.
