The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope team has released an image of the giant elliptical galaxy ESO 306-17. How large is this galaxy? The diameter of our own Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light years in diameter. The elliptical galaxy ESO 306-17 has a diameter that is 1 million light years across. The galaxy is located in the southern constellation Columba (which is Latin for dove) and is about half a billion light-years away. You can click on the link for elliptical galaxy ESO 306-17 to download a 3855 x 3831 image of the galaxy. You can also watch a video from the ESA/Hubble team as they zoom into the galaxy.

Located half a billion light-years from Earth, ESO 306-17, is a large, bright elliptical galaxy in the southern sky of a type known as a fossil group. Astronomers use this term to emphasise the isolated nature of these galaxies.

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