Newly Discovered Giant Galaxies Dwarf the Milky Way
upstart writes in with an IRC submission:
Newly discovered giant galaxies dwarf the Milky Way:
Our universe may be filled with unseen giants. Astronomers have discovered two giant radio galaxies, which are some of the largest-known objects in the universe. This revelation suggests that the enormous galaxies may be more common than previously believed.
[...] Giant radio galaxies [are] rare and have jets [that flow perpendicularly to the galaxy's disk] that exceed 22 times the size of our Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy, which is also fairly common, and looks like it sounds: a spiral-shaped galaxy with a central bar-shaped structure made of stars.
Now, astronomers have found two giant radio galaxies in a rather small patch of sky.
"We found these giant radio galaxies in a region of sky which is only about 4 times the area of the full Moon," said Jacinta Delhaize, lead study author and research fellow at the University of Cape Town, in a statement. "Based on our current knowledge of the density of giant radio galaxies in the sky, the probability of finding two of them in this region is less than 0.0003 per cent. This means that giant radio galaxies are probably far more common than we thought!"
Journal Reference:
Delhaize, J, Heywood, I, Prescott, M, et al. MIGHTEE: are giant radio galaxies more common than we thought?, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (DOI: 10.1093/mnras/staa3837)
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