Astronomers have discovered the largest galaxy in the universe

A team of researchers led by Martin Oey from the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands openedThe discovery of a radio galaxy of at least 5 Mpc / The discovery of a radio galaxy of at least 5 Mpc large-scale galaxy, which is located 3 billion light-years from Earth. The system was called Alcyoneus, its length is 16.3 million light years.

Alcyoneus is the largest galaxy on record. For comparison: the length of our Milky Way galaxy is about 256 thousand km. light years.

The new system is a giant elliptical radio galaxy. It includes the host galaxy (cluster of stars that revolve around the galactic core, containing a supermassive black hole), and huge jets and petals escaping from the galactic center. The mass of the black hole Alcyoneus is 400 times greater than in the Milky Way.

Radio image of the galaxy:

Scientists suggest that the jets inside the galaxy are created by a supermassive black hole when it absorbs matter from a giant disk around it. In this case, part of the matter, which is twisted in a spiral with a base in the center of the hole, is beyond the horizon. events and can be ejected into space in the form of jets of ionized plasma with a speed close to the speed Sveta. They form petals, which gradually increase, and the length of Alcyoneus grows.

The low-frequency ARray (LOFAR) equipment was used to study the new galaxy. This is a system of 20,000 radio antennas, installed at 52 points in Europe. The LOFAR data was reprocessed using a new computational pipeline, removing compact radio sources and correcting for optical distortion. According to astronomers, this made it possible to most accurately outline the lobes of the radio galaxy and estimate their size.

Using the example of Alcyoneus, scientists plan to establish why radio galaxies grow to a colossal scale and how this process goes. The author of the study, Martin Oey, noted that if the growth of a radio galaxy depends on certain characteristics of the host galaxy, then their detection will make it possible to predict the behavior of other similar systems.