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Showing posts from April, 2022

ALCYONEUS GALAXY

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  NASA defines a galaxy as "a huge collection of gas, dust, and billions of stars and their solar systems, all held together by gravity." A team of astronomers led by Martijn S.S.L. Oei of Leiden University in the Netherlands, have found a new giant radio galaxy that appears to be the largest one of the other known GRGs. Giant radio galaxies are radio galaxies with an overall projected linear length exceeding at least 2.3 million light years. They are rare objects grown in low-density environments. Alcyoneus is the largest known galaxy has been discovered by astronomers . It is  153 times the size of our own Milky Way. It is around 3 billion light-years away from Earth and is roughly 16.3 million light-years long. On the other hand  the Milky Way is just under 106,000 light-years long. Alcyoneus is a giant radio galaxy,  containing a host galaxy and massive jets and lobes that erupt from the centre of it. Very few things are known about these mysterious radio galaxies but exp