Posted on 12/09/2024 5:02:58 PM PST by Red Badger
It was barely a century ago that we thought the Milky Way encompassed the entirety of the Universe. Now? We’re not even a special galaxy.
Key Takeaways
Our galaxy, if you measure its longest axis from end-to-end, extends for over 100,000 light-years in space: a remarkable distance to fathom that’s billions of times the Earth-Sun separation.
Yet if we compare our Milky Way to the largest galaxies in the Universe, we learn that not only are we nothing special, but we’re not even in the same league as the largest ones of all. How large can the largest galaxy truly be?
Even if we restrict ourselves to the ones we’ve found, rather than what’s theoretically possible, what we’ve found is truly, profoundly tremendous.
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PICTURES OF THE MANY GALAXIES AT LINK...............
Ping!.....................
Andromeda’s diameter roughly doubles our own: 220,000 light-years. The Andromeda galaxy (M31), as imaged from a ground-based telescope with multiple filters and reconstructed to show a colorized portrait. Compared to the Milky Way, Andromeda is significantly larger in extent, with a diameter that’s approximately 220,000 light-years: comparable to double the Milky Way’s size. If the Milky Way were shown superimposed atop Andromeda, its stellar disk would end roughly where Andromeda’s dust lanes appear darkest. Credit: Adam Evans/flickr
The Tadpole Galaxy, shown here, has an enormous tail to it: evidence of tidal interactions. The gas that’s stripped out of one galaxy gets stretched into a long, thin strand, which contracts under its own gravity to form stars. The galactic element itself is comparable to the scale of the Milky Way, but the tidal stream alone is some ~280,000 light-years long: more than twice as large as our Milky Way’s estimated size. Credit: NASA, H. Ford (JHU), G. Illingsworth (USCS/LO), M. Clampin (STScI), G. Hartig (STScI), the ACS science team, and ESA The Tadpole galaxy’s tail alone is 280,000 light-years long.
This galaxy, UGC 2885, also known as Rubin’s galaxy, is the largest spiral galaxy ever discovered, and possesses about 10 times as many stars as the Milky Way. UGC 2885 is severely gravitationally disrupted. At an estimated 832,000 light-years across, it is arguably the largest known spiral galaxy, although its tidal arms and distorted shape are likely temporary on cosmic timescales. Credit: NASA, ESA, and B. Holwerda (University of Louisville) Severely disrupted, UGC 2885 is our largest spiral: 832,000 light-years in extent.
Giant elliptical galaxy NGC 584, shown here, was discovered and recorded in 1785, and is located approximately 62 million light-years away. Although it was not known to be an extragalactic object until the 1920s, it was briefly the most distant object known and recorded until NGC 1 was identified a few months later. Credit: Sloan Digital Sky Survey Elliptical galaxies, however, are the largest galaxies of all.
But the biggest galaxy of all? That’s IC 1101. The giant galaxy cluster, Abell 2029, houses galaxy IC 1101 at its core. At 5.5 million light years across, over 100 trillion stars and the mass of nearly a quadrillion suns, it’s the largest known galaxy of all. As massive and impressive as this galaxy cluster is, it’s unfortunately difficult for the Universe to make something significantly larger owing to its finite age and the presence of dark energy. Credit: NASA/Digitized Sky Survey 2 Half its light is contained within a central, 2 million light-year radius.
YouTube (ugh) has some terrific shows on Galaxy IC-1101, a possible 200+ trillion stars is hard to fathom.
CAn you add a banana to the image for size comparison?
Compared to our Solar System, galaxies simply outclass us. logarithmic view solar system A logarithmic chart of distances, showing the planets, the Voyager spacecraft, the Oort Cloud, and our nearest star: Proxima Centauri. The Sun may be 109 times the diameter of Earth, but the Earth-Sun distance is over 100 times larger than the Sun’s diameter; the distance to Voyager 1 or 2 is ~100 times larger than the Earth-Sun distance; the Oort Cloud’s density peaks ~100 times farther away than Voyager 2, and the distance to the nearest stars are ~100 times farther away than even that. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
I thought tweenkies were the gold standard for comparing cosmic and paranormal measurements.
Compared to our Solar System, ...100 times farther away than even that. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
= = =
But, as a US Senator, I am really, really important!
That’s a big Twinkie
😁👍
So? After the Andromeda - Milky Way merger, we will be unstoppable. We’ll be bigger than U.S. Steel!
Far out.
Or General Motors! Solid as Sears!..................
It is big!
We don’t know because we haven’t found all of them yet.
How do they know how big the Milky Way is if we can’t see the other side?........................
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