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Largest-Known Spiral Galaxy Discovered

Posted by samzenpus on from the biggest-there-is dept.

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."

4 of 27 comments (clear)

  1. Long Galaxy is Long. by VortexCortex · · Score: 4, Funny

    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...

  2. Largest = longest by EdgePenguin · · Score: 4, Informative

    To clarify, this does not mean the most massive spiral galaxy found, it means the longest.

  3. Only a spiral by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 4, Informative

    The largest known elliptical galaxy IC 1101 has a diameter of 6 million light years.

  4. Quickly, get the news out by bytesex · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.