Super spiral galaxies are beautiful giants

Astronomers had thought, in fact, that this had to be the case, and that spiral galaxies can't grow big, and that elliptical galaxies were formed from smaller galaxies crashing together and chaotically mixing.

Dr. Patrick Ogle, an astrophysicist with the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, has found a new, rare kind of "super spiral" galaxy - ten times the size of our galaxy - that seems to form from mergers, but somehow forms new spiral arms. Theorists will now have to determine just how this kind of galactic collision can happen.

Related Links

- Paper in the Astrophysical Journal
- NASAJet Propulsion Labrelease
-Sky and Telescope story
-Scientific American story