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Largest-Known Spiral Galaxy Discovered
littlesparkvt writes "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 galaxy, based on archival data from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) mission."
Link to more Nasa's images.
TFA says the elongated shape is likely do to interaction with a neighboring galaxy, which may have also spawned a nearby dwarf galaxy; Both visible primarily thanks to the ultraviolet instrumentation.
The tidal dwarf candidate is brighter in the ultraviolet than other
regions of the galaxy, a sign it bears a rich supply of hot young
stars less than 200 million years old.
Hmm, Sounds about like Hollywood...
To clarify, this does not mean the most massive spiral galaxy found, it means the longest.
Now just don't bother me until they discover an UNKNOWN one.
The largest known elliptical galaxy IC 1101 has a diameter of 6 million light years.
Yeah, right. What'll they say when they find out what's really out there is a giant fun-house convex mirror pointing right back at our galaxy?
THEN we'll finally get around to losing that weight that the galaxy's put on.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
Before we're overshadowed by this:
http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/224-news-2013/2212-astronomers-discover-the-largest-structure-in-the-universe
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.