Largest-Known Spiral Galaxy, five times bigger than our Milky Way

The spiral is 522,000 light-years across from the tip of one outstretched arm to the tip of the other, which makes it about 5 times the size of our home galaxy, the Milky Way!!

The spectacular barred spiral galaxy NGC 6872 has ranked among the biggest stellar systems for decades. Now a team of astronomers from the United States, Chile and Brazil has crowned it the largest-known spiral, based on archival data from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) mission, which has since been loaned to the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.

Source

There are roughly 100-400 billion (1–4×10^^11) stars in our own galaxy, I'll let you do the maths for the estimated numbers of stars in this giant galaxy!!

reply to post by elevenaugust



Oh wow.. they found another one bigger then last one ?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Oh its the same

Originally posted by Spacespider
reply to post by elevenaugust

 

Oh wow.. they found another one bigger then last one ?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Oh its the same

Oupps! Sorry, mods please delete!