[Red Badger]

Ping!.....................

[Red Badger]

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

[Red Badger]

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.

[Red Badger]

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.

[Red Badger]

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.

[Red Badger]

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.

[quantim]

YouTube (ugh) has some terrific shows on Galaxy IC-1101, a possible 200+ trillion stars is hard to fathom.

[Larry Lucido]

So? After the Andromeda - Milky Way merger, we will be unstoppable. We’ll be bigger than U.S. Steel!

[FreeperCell]

Far out.

[rfreedom4u]

We don’t know because we haven’t found all of them yet.

[MtnClimber]

Bigger than ten boxes.

[Hebrews 11:6]

So, the answer (as far as we know) is 5.5 million light years across, or 55 times larger than our Milky Way. That is one spacious outfield--when we play there, we'd best not swing for the fences.

[know.your.why]

URANUS!! Oh, wait....

[fruser1]

Biggest Galaxy

Is it bigger than Texas?

[hecticskeptic]

However big it is, the stars are all numbered and have a name....

Psalm 147:4 He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names.

[Army Air Corps]

Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.

[Disambiguator]

This thread brings to mind the opening sequence of this MP sketch, with Cleese doing his best narrator voice.

https://youtu.be/L1sYgknWGSA?si=VzXcKrMMq1S_ZyKh

[mfish13]

It’s big. Really big.

[Captain Peter Blood]

No one knows that and probably never will. Unless we can invent a space engine that can go 5x the speed of light.

[Red6]

Cool article.