‘Godzilla Galaxy’ Spotted Using NASA’s Hubble Telescope

A Hubble Space Telescope photograph showcases the spiral galaxy UGC 2885, located 232 million light-years away in the northern constellation Perseus (via NASA/ESA/Benne Holwerda/University of Louisville)

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a “Godzilla galaxy”—2.5 times wider than our Milky Way and filled with 10 times as many stars.

The largest known galaxy in the local universe, UGC 2885 is a “gentle giant,” according to researchers, who say it’s been sitting quietly for billions of years, sippin on gin and juice hydrogen.

Even its supermassive central black hole is a sleeping giant: Because the galaxy does not appear to be feeding on much smaller satellite systems, it is “starved of infalling gas,” NASA explained.

UGC 2885—nicknamed “Rubin’s galaxy” after astronomer Vera Rubin (1928-2016)—was first observed by University of Louisville professor Benne Holwerda.

“My research was in a large part inspired by Vera Rubin’s work in 1980 on the size of this galaxy,” he said in a statement.

Rubin pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates, which provide evidence for the existence of dark matter.

“We consider this a commemorative image,” Holwerda said. “This goal to cite Dr. Rubin in our observation was very much part of our original Hubble proposal.”

Vera Rubin is one of the names associated with the kinematic evidence of dark matter in galaxies. This is the “rotation curve” of galaxies tracking the motion around their centers. (2/N) pic.twitter.com/CLpSFVz1KI

— BenneHolwerda (@BenneHolwerda) January 5, 2020

NASA hopes these results, presented during this week’s American Astronomical Society meeting in Hawaii, can shed light on what led to the galaxy’s “monstrous” size.

“How it got so big is something we don’t quite know yet,” Holwerda said. “It’s as big as you can make a disk galaxy without hitting anything else in space.”

Perhaps it’s just a simple case of being given the room to grow: the Rubin galaxy is fairly isolated, with no nearby galaxies to crash into and disrupt the shape of its disk.

It’s unclear, though, whether the monster system has been gobbling up smaller satellite galaxies over time, or slowly accreting gas for new stars.

“It seems like it’s been puttering along, slowly growing,” according to Holwerda, whose team is still counting the number of globular star clusters in the galaxy’s halo.

NASA will undoubtedly keep its eye on UGC 2885, already proposing exploration by the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope and planned Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST).

More on Geek.com:

• Hubble Detects Dynamic Galactic ‘Besties’ in Space
• Hubble Captures ‘Ghostly Face’ in ‘Titanic’ Smashup of Two Galaxies
• Hubble Snaps Photo of Mysterious Interstellar Comet

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