Scientists, known as Astronomers, have been searching through the NASA/IPAC Extragalatic Database (NED) and have found a new type of galaxy! They are called Super Spirals and they have been hiding in plain sight in front of Astronomers for many, many years.
These newly found Super Spirals are 8-14 times brighter than the Milky Way, possess 10 times as much mass, and create 30 times more stars. They can also span a mind-boggling 440,000 light-years in width. Basically, they put our measly 100,000-light-years-wide galaxy in its place.
The lead researcher, Patrick Ogle said "It's as if we have just discovered a new land animal stomping around that is the size of an elephant but had shockingly gone unnoticed by zoologists."
For a little more information about these Super Spirals, NASA writes, "Super spirals can shine with anywhere from eight to 14 times the brightness of the Milky Way. They possess as much as 10 times our galaxy's mass. Their gleaming, starry disks stretch from twice to even four times the width of the Milky Way galaxy's approximately 100,000 light-year-wide disk, with the largest super spiral spanning a whopping 440,000 light-years. Super spirals also give off copious ultraviolet and mid-infrared light, signifying a breakneck pace of churning out new stars. Their star formation rate is as high as 30 times that of our own run-of-the-mill galaxy."
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