IC 1101 facts for kids
IC 1101 is the biggest galaxy we know of. It is a huge, oval-shaped galaxy called a supergiant elliptical galaxy. You can find it right in the center of a group of galaxies called the Abell 2029 galaxy cluster. This galaxy and its cluster are very far away, about 1.07 billion light years from us. They are located in the part of the sky we call the constellation of Virgo.
How Big is IC 1101?
IC 1101 is truly enormous! It stretches out about 4 to 6 million light years across. This makes it the largest galaxy ever discovered in terms of its width and overall size.
It is the main galaxy in the giant galaxy cluster known as Abell 2029. This cluster is incredibly heavy, with a mass equal to about 100 trillion stars. Most of this mass comes from something mysterious called dark matter. IC 1101 is also known as A2029-BCG because it is the brightest and biggest galaxy in the Abell 2029 cluster.
To give you an idea of its size, IC 1101 is more than 50 times bigger than our own Milky Way galaxy. It also has 100 times more mass than the Milky Way. If IC 1101 were in the place of our galaxy, it would be so big that it would swallow up many nearby galaxies. This includes the Milky Way, the Large Magellanic Cloud, the Small Magellanic Cloud, the Andromeda Galaxy, and the Triangulum Galaxy. It would even take over most of the entire Local Group of galaxies that we belong to!
IC 1101 grew so large because it has crashed into many smaller galaxies over a very long time. These smaller galaxies were about the size of the Milky Way or Andromeda. Through these many collisions, IC 1101 has steadily become the giant galaxy we see today.
This galaxy also has the largest central part, or "core," of any known galaxy. Its core is about 13,000 light years wide. This is even bigger than the previous record holder, which had a core of 10,000 light years in the elliptical galaxy A2261-BCG.
Related pages
- List of galaxies
- Abell 2029 - The galaxy cluster where IC 1101 is found.
- Virgo (constellation)
See also
In Spanish: IC 1101 para niños
