That beautiful blue!
"Measured tip-to-tip across its spiral arms, the galaxy spans more than 522,000 light years, making the star system five times the size of the Milky Way."
That's a lot of empires, however if the "tip" is the extreme extension of the "arm" then the spiral itself is about as large as the Milky Way.
How about 6 million light years? Yes, we can: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IC_1101