Aivin Gast studies at the Somerville University of Oxford and is a research intern at the Leiden Observatory under Martijn Oei. He was tasked with manually searching for giant radio galaxies using images taken by the Lofar telescope network, which is located in Drenthe. They forward the collected data to an international team of scientists from the Netherlands, France and the United Kingdom.
And that recently led to the discovery of a gigantic galaxy, just like the Milky Way that the Earth is in. Only then about 3 billion years away. Aivin suggested the name Alcyoneus, after the story of a giant who fought the hero Hercules for supremacy over the cosmos in Greek mythology. Alcyoneus has the largest single galaxy structure in the universe now known to humans.
The discovery of the gigantic galaxy did not go unnoticed. Also the BBC wrote namely about the discovery of Alcyoneus.
Photographer Jeffrey Groenewegen took a picture of the Milky Way and explains the best way to do it:
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