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It was once expected that any icy body larger than approximately 200 km in radius was likely to be in hydrostatic equilibrium (HE). [7] However, Ceres (r = 470 km) is the smallest body for which detailed measurements are consistent with hydrostatic equilibrium, [ 8 ] whereas Iapetus (r = 735 km) is the largest icy body that has been found to ...
This is the nearest red giant to the Earth, and the fourth brightest star in the night sky. Pollux (β Geminorum) 9.06 ± 0.03 [96] AD The nearest giant star to the Earth. Spica (α Virginis A) 7.47 ± 0.54 [102] One of the nearest supernova candidates and the sixteenth-brightest star in the night sky. Regulus (α Leonis A) 4.16 × 3.14 [103]
It is the most massive galaxy supercluster discovered so far. [19] Big Ring (2024) 1,300,000,000 Made up of galaxy clusters. Quipu (2025) 1,300,000,000 Contains 68 galaxy clusters. [20] (Theoretical limit) 1,200,000,000 Structures larger than this size are incompatible with the cosmological principle according to all estimates. However, whether ...
The observable universe contains as many as an estimated 2 trillion galaxies [95] [96] [97] and, overall, as many as an estimated 10 24 stars [98] [99] – more stars (and earth-like planets) than all the grains of beach sand on planet Earth; [100] [101] [102] but less than the total number of atoms estimated in the universe as 10 82; [103] and ...
Because of the universe's expansion, there may be some later age at which a signal sent from the same galaxy can never reach the Earth at any point in the infinite future, so, for example, we might never see what the galaxy looked like 10 billion years after the Big Bang, [19] even though it remains at the same comoving distance less than that ...
Because the universe is expanding, is smaller in the past and larger in the future. Extrapolating back in time with certain cosmological models will yield a moment when the scale factor was zero; our current understanding of cosmology sets this time at 13.787 ± 0.020 billion years ago. If the universe continues to expand forever, the scale ...
Astronomers first began to conjecture that the Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy, rather than an ordinary spiral galaxy, in the 1960s. [176] [177] [178] These conjectures were confirmed by the Spitzer Space Telescope observations in 2005 that showed the Milky Way's central bar to be larger than previously thought. [179]
Hence, it is unclear whether the observable universe matches the entire universe or is significantly smaller, though it is generally accepted that the universe is larger than the observable universe. The universe may be compact in some dimensions and not in others, similar to how a cuboid [citation needed] is longer in one dimension than the ...