Hubble Space Telescope helps astronomers find colossal nine-ring galaxy in 'cosmic bull's-eye’
The nine-ringed galaxy nicknamed Bull's-eye has an arrow through its heart when another galaxy shot straight through it about 50 million years ago. NASA said it’s common for galaxies to collide but "extremely rare" to see one shoot through the center of another.
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Scientists have discovered an impressive galaxy using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which has six more rings than other previously known galaxies and an arrow-like feature straight through its center.
Hubble captured a "cosmic bull's-eye" with galaxy LEDA 1313424, according to NASA. After finding the first eight rings with Hubble, the science team confirmed a ninth ring using data from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Most other galaxies discovered have a maximum of two or three rings.
The team behind the findings published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters believes there may have been a 10th ring, but it is too dim to see.
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The artist's concept below shows our home galaxy, the Milky Way, next to the newly discovered galaxy nicknamed "Bull's-eye." LEDA 1313424, aka Bull's-eye, is almost two-and-a-half times larger than the Milky Way, at 250,000 light-years across.
This illustration compares the size of our own Milky Way galaxy to gargantuan galaxy LEDA 1313424, nicknamed the Bull's-eye. The Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years in diameter, and the Bull's-eye is almost two-and-a-half times larger, at 250,000 light-years across.
(NASA, ESA, Ralf Crawford)
NASA said the discovery was also a bull's-eye for science because of what it confirms about galaxy ring formation over time.
Yale professor Pieter G. van Dokkum, a study co-author, said the rings appear to move outward nearly as models predict.
"That theory was developed for the day that someone saw so many rings," van Dokkum said. "It is immensely gratifying to confirm this long-standing prediction with the Bull's-eye galaxy."
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If you look down at the galaxy, the rings appear closer to the center, and more spread out the farther away from the core.
EDA 1313424, aptly nicknamed the Bull's-eye, is two and a half times the size of our Milky Way and has nine rings — six more than any other known galaxy. High-resolution imagery from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope confirmed eight rings, and data from the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii confirmed a ninth. Hubble and Keck also confirmed which galaxy dove through the Bull's-eye, creating these rings: the blue dwarf galaxy that sits to its immediate center-left.
(NASA, ESA, Imad Pasha (Yale), Pieter van Dokkum (Yale))
Scientists say the arrow-like feature straight through the gigantic galaxy was formed when a blue dwarf galaxy shot through the heart of Bull's-eye about 50 million years ago, creating more rings in its wake. NASA said it’s common for galaxies to collide but "extremely rare" to see one shoot through the center of another.
Hubble’s image was captured at just the right time.
"There’s a very narrow window after the impact when a galaxy like this would have so many rings," van Dokkum said.
Bull's-eye will help astronomers improve models of how galaxies evolve over billions of years.