Largest-Known Spiral Galaxy Discovered 27
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."
Long Galaxy is Long. (Score:5, Funny)
Link to more Nasa's images. [nasa.gov]
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...
Re:Thinking about the scale of the universe and... (Score:1, Funny)