IC 1101, The Largest Galaxy!

So I figured that if we are going to start to write about the Universe here, might as well start with something big right? Well I decided why not write about the largest Galaxy that we know of so far, IC 1101! IC 1101 gets it's name when it was accidentally classified as a nebula back in 1895. It is the 1,101st object classified in the Index Catalogue of Nebulae and Star Clusters (Which is abbreviated as IC). It is classified as a Supergiant Elliptical to Lenticular Galaxy (This terminology I shall be reviewing in a later post), and it is the brighest Galaxy in it's cluster.

IC 1101 taken by Hubble June 1995 Photo Credit: NASA

IC 1101 was originally discovered by British Astronomer Frederick William Herschel the First in 1790 though was not classified until 1895 by John Louis Emil Dreyer whom, as stated before, miss-classified it as a Nebula! It was not until 1932 as telescopes improved that we started to actually notice that some of it's nebulous qualities were actually other Galaxies and as they studied it more they would eventually re-classify it rightfully as a Galaxy.

So how big is IC 1101? Well it's really difficult to give something so big a sense of scale, but I shall try my best. To start, our own Galaxy contains roughly 100-400 billion stars. Sounds like a lot doesn't it? IC 1101 contains an estimated 100 trillion stars! Shown below as well is a photo showing a size comparison of 4 different Galaxies, the smalled being our Milky Way galaxy, the largest being IC 1101.

Size comparison from Smallest to Largest: Milky Way, Andromeda, M87, IC 1101

Generally speaking though, Galaxies of this type tend to be older, and as such IC 1101 is one of the more older galaxies we know of our there. It's golden hue comes from the fact that many of the stars in the Galaxy are mineral rich and are older stars some being close to seven billion years older then our very own Sol. Also, like many elliptical and lenticular galaxies, it has exhausted much of it's stellar dust for star formation which helps to give it that formless shape you see in the photographs.

While there isn't a large amount of information on it, it is still a fascinating thing to read about and to see and I hope you enjoyed reading about it and looking at some of the photos. I encourage you to continue to dig up whatever it is you can find on IC 1101 and perhaps learn something about it that I may not have shared on this post! That all said though, keep your eyes peeled for the next post and I hope you enjoyed the read! Feel free to share and rate!