Astronomers reveal the true size of the biggest known galaxy– www.techexplorist.com

When you look up at the night sky, the stars you see are part of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. But out there in the universe, galaxies come in all shapes and sizes, and some are truly enormous. A galaxy’s size is closely tied to how many stars it contains. One of them, IC 1101, has just been confirmed as the largest galaxy ever measured.

IC 1101 stretches an incredible 520,000 light-years across. To put that in perspective: In contrast to the Milky Way, which is about 100,000 light-years wide, IC 1101 is more than five times larger.

If you placed it where the Milky Way is, it would swallow up not just our galaxy but also many of our closest neighbors.

Scientists estimate that there are 3.4 trillion stars inside this galaxy, compared to a mere 200–400 billion in the Milky Way.