Think the Milky Way is big? It’s puny compared to M87, an elliptical galaxy 980,000 light years in diameter. The Milky Way is only 100,000 light years in diameter. Let’s not even get into Hercules A, which is 1.5 million light years across.
Astronomer and artist Rhys Taylor has made such comparisons easier and much more fun with his new infographics ("which is what I gather is now the cool term for ‘posters,’" he writes) comparing the sizes of different galaxies.
via How Big Is A Galaxy? Milky Way Shown To Scale | Popular Science.
