# @nasa on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/CpLRevpLcyn
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/4449859-nasa-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/1996369d5a.jpg
- **Posted:** 2023-02-27T18:37:06.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** NASA (@NASA) — https://gondola.cc/NASA

## Caption

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's center shines brightest in light yellow, its two blueish spiral tails extending far into space. Visible as an oblong disk above the large galaxy, a smaller galaxy can be seen, its gravitational effect stretching and disrupting the larger of the two galaxies. In the upper left of the image, the faint ultraviolet glow of new star birth within a tidal dwarf galaxy can barely be made out as a bloom of misty blue atop the deep blackness of space. The background of the image includes numerous distant galaxies sprinkled throughout in shades of yellow, blue, and red. 

Credit: NASA/ESO/JPL-Caltech/DSS

#NASA #Space #Cosmos #Galaxy #Spitzer #Astrophotography

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## Tags

cosmos, nasa, astrophotography, space, spitzer, galaxy

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