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  • Southern Pinwheel Galaxy M83 Centre
  • NGC 1300
  • The Andromeda Galaxy
  • M104 - The Sombrero Galaxy
  • M104 - The Sombrero Galaxy 2
  • Arp 273
  • NGC 6744 - A Milky Way Twin
  • Edge-On Galaxy NGC 5866
  • Arp 188 - The Tadpole Galaxy
  • The HCG 59 Group of Galaxies
  • Stephan's Quintet
  • Sizes of Galaxies
  • Sizes of Galaxies II
  • Sizes of Galaxies III
  • Supernova 1994D in NGC 4526
  • Our Local Group
  • Milky Way-Andromeda collision as seen from Earth
  • Milky Way - Andromeda Collision
  • NGC 2683 - The UFO Galaxy
  • Antennae Galaxies colliding
  • Centaurus A
  • The Centre of Centaurus A
  • Virgo Cluster
  • Coma Cluster of Galaxies
  • Structure of the universe 1

Here you can see some of the largest known galaxies directly compared with the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy. The largest of these galaxies - IC 1101 - is a massive elliptical galaxy with an estimated diameter of about 550 000 light-years; it is an impressive assembly of approximately 100 trillion stars. Positioned roughly 1 billion light years away from the Milky Way, IC 1101 is noteworthy for harbouring one of the largest known black holes at its centre, an ultramassive black hole in the mass range of 40–100 billion solar masses.

By the way: don't put the figures for the diameters of such elliptical galaxies on the gold scale. The galaxies have no clear limit as they fade out gradually and you can set the value almost arbitrarily. This is why you can find values ranging from 550 000 light years (Wikipedia) to 6 million light years.


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Sizes of Galaxies II
Published by Published or last modified on 2024-05-22
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