There are many galaxies in the universe, including of course the galaxy in which our Solar System is located, namely the Milky Way or the Milky Way. Well, astronomers have just discovered the largest galaxy ever detected so far.
As quoted by us from Live Science, the galaxy is named as Alcynoeus with an estimated width of 16.3 million light years. Its diameter is 160 times larger than the Milky Way and 4 times larger than the previous largest galaxy, IC 1101.
Alcynoeus himself is a mythological giant who became the enemy of Hercules. The distance of the Alcynoeus galaxy is estimated to be 3 billion light years from Planet Earth.
Scientists are still researching why this galaxy can be so large in size. It is thought that this galaxy has an active giant black hole at its center.
The hole emits a jet stream that hurls cosmic material throughout the universe at a speed comparable to the speed of light.
The largest galaxy Alcyoneus was discovered by astronomers from the University of Leiden, the Netherlands, from data captured by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer satellite and LOw Frequency ARray (lofar) located in Europe.
"Scientists have only been able to measure a fraction of the length of this galaxy, a low estimate of the total. But even so, at more than 16 million light-years across, this galaxy is so large that it is comparable to 100 Milky Way galaxies," the researchers said.
The galaxy itself has always been an interesting object, let alone the largest galaxy. "Galaxies are not only peaceful collections of stars, but also spectacular and violent processes, such as jet streams that reach deep into space, millions of light years away," they added.