The galaxy MCG+01-02-015, also known as LEDA 1852, got photographed using the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instrument. The special characteristic of this galaxy is that it’s extremely isolated. Generally, galaxies are part of clusters which are in turn part of larger formations, bonded together in structures called galactic filaments, formations at a really huge scale. Among these filaments, however, there are cosmic voids in which sometimes there may be a lonely galaxy.

LEDA 1852 is a spiral galaxy located about 330 million light-years away in the constellation Pisces. In the image it’s surrounded by other galaxies but is an optical illusion caused by the perspective. In fact the other galaxies are all very distant from the cosmic void where there LEDA 1852 is located.

The galaxy LEDA 1852 is interesting because the cases of galaxies within a cosmic void are rare. Generally, the density of matter in a cosmic void is minimal, in the order in an atom per cubic meter. LEDA 1852 is contained in the so-called Boötes Void, also called the Great Void, called a supervoid because its size is really huge with a diameter of about 250 million light years. It’s in fact one of the biggest voids known.

The Boötes Void, which has a more or less spherical shape, may have formed from the union of smaller voids. It’s as if as many soap bubbles put together formed a very large bubble. In this supervoid there’s a small number of galaxies including LEDA 1852 in a region shaped vaguely like a cylinder in the center of this supervoid.

The isolation of LEDA 1852 is such that if sentient beings are living there they’d need powerful telescopes to discover the existence of other galaxies. In essence, their astronomy would be limited to their galaxy until they reached a technological level equal to that achieved on Earth in the ’60s. Their universe might remain limited for a long time and the discovery of other galaxies might be really a huge surprise.

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