• Question: What is the biggest galaxy?

    Asked by anon-252370 to Tom on 5 May 2020.
    • Photo: Tom Louth

      Tom Louth answered on 5 May 2020:

      I’m afraid I don’t know. I only design the instruments that other people use to do the actual science. I’m sure one of the astronomers or astrophysicists here will know though.

Comments

  • Photo: Mark

    Mark commented on :

    According to space.com, it is IC 110, an elliptical galaxy that is 5.5 million light years across and has 100 trillion stars.

  • Photo: Roan

    Roan commented on :

    IC 1101 is one of the largest galaxies we know of, but in truth we don’t know what’s the biggest galaxy in the Universe. There are billions of galaxies in total, so there are still lots of galaxies that we haven’t even found yet. The biggest galaxy might be one we haven’t even discovered!
    –
    Galaxies also aren’t the biggest things in the Universe. We have found many ‘galaxy clusters’, which are big groups of galaxies, in the same way that galaxies are big groups of stars. You can also search online for pictures of ‘galaxy filaments’, which are beautiful structures made out of huge numbers of galaxies, and are some of the biggest objects in the Universe!