| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
Behold: The Largest Known Spiral Galaxy
This composite of the giant barred spiral galaxy NGC 6872 combines visible light images from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope with far-ultraviolet data from NASA’s GALEX and 3.6-micron infrared data acquired by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/ESO/JPL-Caltech/DSS
Astronomers have long known that a spectacular barred spiral galaxy named NGC 6872 is a behemoth, but by compiling data from several space- and ground-based observatories and running a few computer simulations, they have now determined this is the largest spiral galaxy we know of.
Measuring tip-to-tip across its two outsized spiral arms, NGC 6872 spans more than 522,000 light-years, making it more than five times the size of our Milky Way galaxy.
(…)
Read the rest of Behold: The Largest Known Spiral Galaxy (264 words)
© nancy for Universe Today, 2013. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: galaxies, GALEX
Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh
2013-01-10 15:15:58
Source: http://www.universetoday.com/99378/behold-the-largest-known-spiral-galaxy/
Source:
