Nov 20, 2020
A Sleeping Giant NGC 4889
Elliptical galaxies are often hard to judge, lacking the features of a spiral galaxy, but this galaxy is probably the most massive of all galaxies out to 320 Million light years from Earth.
It is thought to be a thousand times more massive than our Milky Way, and with a central supermassive black hole that is the largest detected, at 21 Billion solar masses (compared to Sag A* which is just over 4 million M), if that black hole was where our sun was, it’s outer edges would be between 2 - 12 times the distance of Pluto !
Thankfully this mammoth galaxy is both distant (308 Million light years) and fairly quiet, having long since consumed all near available matter.
