Simply taking a look at a single picture of NGC 6872, you’ll be able to’t assist however be impressed.
The barred spiral galaxy seems to be fairly totally different than our personal Milky Way, with two lengthy tendrils of stars emanating from reverse ends of the construction. It is as if invisible giants are enjoying tug of battle with a spiral galaxy.
However what makes NGC 6872 actually spectacular is its extraordinary measurement — it is the largest spiral galaxy we’ve discovered thus far. From finish to finish, the galaxy stretches 522,000 light-years throughout, which makes it greater than 5 occasions bigger than the Milky Way.
A newly launched picture reveals the galaxy in its entirety, combining seen gentle photographs, far-ultraviolet information, and infrared information from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, NASA’s now-decommissioned Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), and NASA’s now-decommissioned Spitzer Space Telescope, respectively.
NGC 6872, which is situated some 212 million light-years away from Earth, is suspected to have such an elongated form attributable to its gravitational interactions with the close by disk galaxy IC4970, which harbors simply one-fifth the mass of its greater neighbor.
These gravitational interactions normally end in a galactic merger. However on this particular case, based on an evaluation of the information used to create the brand new composite picture, astronomers suspect that the interplay between the 2 galaxies is definitely producing a brand new galaxy.
“Understanding the construction and dynamics of close by interacting programs like this one brings us a step nearer to putting these occasions into their correct cosmological context, paving the best way to decoding what we discover in youthful, extra distant programs,” Eli Dwek, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Area Flight Heart in Greenbelt, Maryland, stated in a 2013 statement (opens in new tab) saying NGC 6872 as the biggest spiral galaxy we have ever seen.
Now, we simply have one query. When is the James Webb Space Telescope going to check out this galactic behemoth?
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