Galaxies generally don't come in onesies. Our home galaxy the Milky Way, is a member of something prosaically named the Local Group, a collection of some dozens of galaxies including two monsters, our own and the Andromeda Galaxy, which is the nearest large bright galaxy, and a naked eye object. (Fainter members are still being discovered.) Groups are not the largest collections of galaxies, which at the largest known scales come grouped in clusters and superclusters, which can contain thousands of individual galaxies.This photo depicts a striking nearby (60 million light years) group named Hickson 44 which contains some dramatically different spirals and a big elliptical in the upper left. As always click the image once to see the APOD description. Click again to see the higher resolution view.
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