Something is Wrong With the Largest Galaxy Ever Found

IC 1101, largest galaxy, galaxy IC 1101 is the largest galaxy ever precisely measured, with a stellar body spanning roughly 1.7 million light-years and a stellar mass nearly sixty times that of the Milky Way. New ultra-deep imaging from the Isaac Newton Telescope, published in July 2026, corrected a widely repeated but outdated claim that IC 1101 spans six million light-years across. It does not. Size isn't what makes IC 1101 remarkable. At its center sits a hollow void more than 13,000 light-years wide, where hundreds of billions of solar masses of expected starlight are simply missing. Astronomers believe a supermassive black hole, tens of billions of times the mass of the Sun, may be responsible, ejected through a gravitational slingshot effect caused by merging black holes. This video explains how IC 1101, the Brightest Cluster Galaxy at the center of the Abell 2029 cluster, grew through billions of years of galactic mergers, why it may be surrounded by up to 140,000 globular clusters, what its X-ray plasma halo and radio jets reveal, and what its 11-billion-year-old stars say about its past. We also look at whether the Milky Way and Andromeda could one day follow the same path. Subscribe for more breakdowns of the universe's greatest mysteries. Timestamps: 0:00 The Largest Galaxy Ever Measured — And Its Missing Core 1:11 Why IC 1101's True Size Took Decades to Measure 2:44 140,000 Globular Clusters and the Hollow Core Mystery 4:18 The Gravitational Slingshot: How Black Holes Carved Out Its Heart 5:31 X-Rays, Radio Jets, and IC 1101's Ancient Stars 7:34 Is This the Milky Way's Future?