how unusual galaxies are formed and evolve tagged posts

The left panel shows a false-color image of PGC 1000714. The right panel shows a B-I color index map that reveals both the outer ring (blue) and diffuse inner ring (light green). Credit: Ryan Beauchemin

Approximately 359 million light-years away from Earth, there is a galaxy with an innocuous name (PGC 1000714) that doesn’t look quite like anything astronomers have observed before. New research provides a 1st description of a well-defined elliptical-like core surrounded by 2 circular rings- a galaxy that appears to belong to a class of rarely observed, Hoag-type galaxies.

“Less than 0.1% of all observed galaxies are Hoag-type galaxies,” says Burcin Mutlu-Pakdil, grad student at Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics, University of Minnesota Twin Cities and University of Minnesota Duluth...