A team of astronomers from USA and South American countries of Chile and Brazil have determined NGC 6872 to be the largest spiral galaxy discovered to date in the universe.
According to Phys.org, the size of NGC 6872 is said to five times larger than the Milky Way Galaxy and is found 212 million light-years away in the southern constellation Pavo. The spiral galaxy had long been considered one of the largest known spiral galaxies for decades, but after analysis of data of NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission (GALAX), the multinational astronomers confirmed to the galaxy's feat.
"Without GALEX's ability to detect the ultraviolet light of the youngest, hottest stars, we would never have recognized the full extent of this intriguing system," said lead scientist Rafael Eufrasio, a research assistant at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., during a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
According to Phys.org, the unusual size of NGC 6872 is a result of its interaction with a smaller disk galaxy named IC4970 which contains one one-fifth of the mass of the larger galaxy. The report also indicates that "large galaxies, including our own, grew through mergers and acquisitions-assembling over billions of years by absorbing numerous smaller systems."
The GALEX mission is led by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and it is responsible for science operations and data analysis.
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