Astronomers have identified what they think is the largest galaxy ever observed, more than 60 times the size of the Milky Way. They believe that in its tremendous mass they may find clues to forces responsible for the clustering of matter in the universe.

The galaxy, embracing more than 100 trillion stars, is the extremely bright object at the center of a rich cluster of galaxies known as Abell 2029. Analysis of new telescopic images indicates that the object is a distinct galaxy more than six million light years in diameter, scientists report in the issue of the journal Science published today.

Until now the largest known galaxy was Markarian 348, which is about 1.3 million light years wide. The Milky Way, Earth's home galaxy, is about 100,000 light years wide. A light year, the distance a beam of light moving at 186,000 miles a second will travel in a year, is roughly 6 trillion miles.

The dense core of the Abell cluster of galaxies had been studied before, but the new images from the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona enabled astronomers to see its faint fringes for the first time and measure the galaxy's true extent. The core galaxy, one of the most luminous ever seen, emits more than one quarter of the total light from the galaxy cluster.