The LARGEST Galaxy In The Universe! | IC 1101

 

Our milky way is a single unremarkable mid-range spiral galaxy a little collection of stars and other objects in a universe that most current estimates say contains at least 2 trillion galaxies the tiniest galaxy known to astronomers is seguae 2 a dwarf galaxy with only roughly 1 000 stars its tenants are among the oldest in the universe and no new stars are being formed there and then there's the opposite of the spectrum the largest currently known galaxy has a generic designation of ic1101 some 1.045 billion light years from earth the nondescript name gives no indication of its incredible size and remarkable features not to mention what it is hiding in its core hiding is very likely a slab or stupendously large black hole of gargantuan proportions that may prove to be the largest in the known universe welcome the fact nominal in today's article we look at the largest galaxy ever found and explore its truly incredible features including its completely out of proportion dark matter content and the supermassive black hole hiding in its center IC1101 was discovered on June 19 1790 by British astronomer William Herschel at the extreme edge of the constellation virgo the

 virgin on the border with the serpent

 it was early 20th century before it was determined to be a galaxy beforehand galaxies were thought to be nebulae in our own milky way this monstrosity is a super giant elliptical to lenticular galaxy meaning it has the rounded shape of an

 ellipse without the large scale spiral arms of galaxies such as the milky way astronomy demands awareness of size mass and distance all can become incomprehensible quickly when imagining the scale of even our own cosmic neighborhood which is only a remote outpost in a solar system that's part of an average galaxy our average galaxy has roughly 250 billion stars while IC1101 is home to about 100 trillion some estimate IC1101's diameter to be 6 million light years or even greater though astronomers debate what constitutes the edge of an elliptical galaxy thus varying figures for the cosmic giant no doubt it's extremely large for perspective our milky way has a visible diameter of 150,000 to 200,000 light years and more recent estimates have increased that number dramatically either way ic1101 is up to 60 times larger than our home for even more perspective if ic1101 replaced the milky way in our little cosmic neighborhood it would encompass andromeda triangulum the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds and all the space in between believe this behemoth is the result of galaxies like our own colliding and forming a newer and much larger one its halo is so immense it's difficult to get exact measurements on the boundaries but what lies inside those

 boundaries is a much larger question

 IC1101 part of the Abell 2029 galaxy cluster has the brilliance of at least one trillion suns so an observer on a planet within the system would see a night sky still illuminated virtually everywhere Abell 2029 contains thousands of galaxies hundreds of which are giant galaxies and IC1101 is so bright it produces over one quarter of the total light from the galaxy cluster so bright that it qualifies for the designation of bcg which is brightest galaxy in a cluster even with its remarkable light IC1101 is birthing very few new stars due to galactic collisions stripping away star forming gas and dust this aging gives the giant a telltale yellowish hue so unless it cannibalizes other galaxies in the astronomical sense it will die but far more interesting is the extreme imbalance between light and mass in IC1101 in favor of its mass in a very old elliptical galaxy such as this astronomers expect the presence of mainly m-type main sequence stars which are red dwarfs and white dwarfs for comparison a typical red dwarf has 20 percent of the sun's mass but emits only 0.55 percent of its luminosity so suffice it to say it's very dim with a population of these stars having the balance favoring mass is expected due to the lack of recent star formation activity as well as with dust but nowhere near as much as ic1101 the ratio is so skewed that no known stellar objects populating ic1101 can explain it this leaves astronomers with one suspect dark matter until recently all galaxies were thought to be largely filled with dark matter though some now appear strangely devoid of the substance astronomers use data from hubble to

 determine that one of them ngc 1052-df4 was stripped of its dark matter by a

 neighboring galaxy that is tearing it apart that still leaves others that have little or no dark matter with no explanation yet still the overwhelming vast majority of observed galaxies have dark matter and great abundance and some are thought to form

 inside massive halos of dark matter

 but that alone doesn't come close to explaining the extreme amount that appears to dominate ic1101 so what is this dark matter astronomers have known for decades that galaxies rotate at a speed that the gravity of its observable mass could not possibly hold it together stars and other objects would have flown off into the intergalactic void long ago and while objects we can see such as planets asteroids stars and galaxies constitute under five percent of the universe's total matter dark matter is estimated to be 27 percent of what fills space without direct detection due to its particles not interacting with electromagnetic force meaning it does not absorb reflect or emit light theories abound as to what it actually is we know of its existence of something's existence only by what it does and what it does is spectacular like a gigantic spider web extending across and even around galaxies dark matter exerts gravitational force to hold entire systems of billions and in the case of ic1101 and a few others trillions of stars together even more importantly astronomers believe dark matter will determine if the universe continues to expand expense to a point and then collapses in on itself or ultimately stop expanding and stay put when it reaches equilibrium as for its massive presence in ic1101 there are only theories thus far as we are limited to seeing its results perhaps the james webb space telescope will shed light infrared or otherwise on this cosmic mystery and if you're ever in the neighborhood it's a good idea to avoid traveling to the middle of this monstrous galaxy at the center of ic1101 is a radio source named pks1508 plus zero five nine we really need to get better at naming celestial objects that emits two jets in opposite directions the jets initially collimated end up dispersing this suggests a stupendously large black hole at the galaxy center astronomers determined that ic1101's core is an incredible 13 700 light years across but it emits much less light than it should given its size so what does this mean in a study published in october 2017 in the monthly notices of the royal astronomical society astronomers who researched the core of ic1101 photometrically found the core to be larger than that of any known galaxy they also found the light deficiency and determined a high likelihood of a long series of galactic mergers with black holes that sank towards the center of the new and larger galaxy the black holes merged propelling billions of stars away from the galactic center

 this would account for the study's finding of a total mass equivalent to 490 billion solar masses that should be there but is not the size of the stupendously large black hole at the core of ic1101 between 40 and 100 billion solar masses research from the university of new amsterdam suggests that these stupendously large black holes or slabs are primordial birthed in the early days of the universe well before galaxies and since these earliest black holes were not formed from collapsing stars their sizes could range from tiny to extremely large the authors of this study even suggest that some of these slabs may exist in intergalactic space away from galaxies which opens up a whole other realm of incredible possibilities what all of this means is that ic1101 is not only the largest known galaxy in the visible universe with an extraordinary amount of dark matter that up to now defies explanation but it has a gigantic black hole at its center that dwarfs just about all others but its distance and halo complicate determining specific answers to its multitude of questions what is ic1101 hiding a lot that we hope to unravel in years to come so what do you think about this amazing galaxy and its secrets does it have more to reveal as we get better at deciphering its mysteries tell us in the comments and as always thank you for reading fact nominal