Key facts
- Category
- Galaxies
- Object class
- Giant elliptical galaxy
- Host
- Abell 2029
- Scale fact
- 500,000 lydiameter
- Composition
- Stars, hot gas, dark matter
IC 1101
500,000 lydiameter
Details
IC 1101 is an enormous cluster-central galaxy embedded in Abell 2029. Systems like this grow huge diffuse halos by cannibalizing neighboring galaxies over billions of years.
IC 1101 is the central giant galaxy of the Abell 2029 cluster. Its stars form a very extended, diffuse envelope built through repeated mergers and stripping in the dense cluster environment rather than a sharply bounded disk.
The quoted 500,000-light-year diameter depends on the surface-brightness threshold used to separate the outer halo from intracluster light. Claims that it contains up to 100 trillion stars are correspondingly uncertain and should not be read as a direct count.
Links
- Preset views
- Wikipedia
- IC 1101 on Wikipedia
- Universe journey
- Cosmic web
Size neighbors
Objects near IC 1101 on the scale
On the logarithmic size axis, IC 1101 falls between Andromeda Galaxy and NGC 6872. The band uses nearby Galaxies records.
Shared physical scale
547,529ly
Sources
References for IC 1101
Measurements and descriptive context are compiled by the Scale of Space team from the references below. If you find an error, please let us know.
- IC 1101 — Wikipedia
- Visual reference: Wikimedia Commons (Hubble 2019 / Kevin M. Gill, CC BY 2.0)
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About
Scale of Space is a scroll-based journey through the universe, placing objects on a single logarithmic scale so you can compare size across an unbroken range.
Guides explain selected parts of that range, while focused views filter the objects by subject.