This is the largest known spiral galaxy. 🌌 This image processed in 2013 reveals a colossal galaxy. At roughly 522,000 light-years from tip-to-tip across its two outsized spiral arms, this galaxy is more than five times the size of the entire Milky Way. This cosmic behemoth’s unusual size and appearance stem from its gravitational interaction with a much smaller disk galaxy, which is only about one-fifth of its mass. This odd duo is located 212 million light-years from Earth in the southern constellation Pavo. To crown this galaxy as the largest yet, astronomers combined visible light images from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope with archived far-ultraviolet data from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer and infrared data acquired by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Image description: A composite image of a giant barred spiral galaxy. In the center of the image, a large spiral-shaped galaxy dominates outwards in shades of yellow, red, and blue. The large galaxy...