A barred spiral galaxy looks completely different from ours Milky Way, with two long star branches emerging from opposite ends of the structure. It’s like invisible giants are playing tug-of-war. spiral galaxy. But what really impresses NGC 6872 is its extraordinary size; the spiral galaxy we discovered Today. The galaxy stretches across 522,000 light years, making it more than five times larger than the Milky Way.

The newly released image combines visible light, far ultraviolet data, and incoming infrared data to show the galaxy as a whole. Very Large Telescope European Southern Observatory, Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), is now decommissioned and NASA’s currently decommissioned Spitzer. space telescope according.

Located about 212 million light-years away, NGC 6872 SoilIt has this elongated shape due to gravitational interaction with nearby disk galaxy IC4970, which has only one-fifth the mass of its larger neighbor.

These gravitational interactions often lead to galactic mergers. But in this particular case, astronomers suspect that the interaction between the two galaxies actually created a new galaxy, according to the analysis of the data used to create the new composite image.

“Understanding the structure and dynamics of closely interacting systems like this brings us closer to placing these events in their appropriate cosmological context, paving the way for deciphering what we find in younger, more distant systems,” said Eli Dweck, an astrophysicist at the Center for Space Flight. NASA’s Goddard Center in Greenbelt, Maryland 2013 disclosures He declares NGC 6872 the largest spiral galaxy we have ever seen. Now we have only one question. When James Webb Space Telescope look at that galactic giant?