After a blue dwarf galaxy shot through it like an arrow, the large Bullseye now has nine rings - six more than any other galaxy.
Around 50 million years ago, a blue dwarf galaxy shot through the center of an enormous galaxy more than twice the size of the Milky Way, dubbed the "Bullseye", but actually called LEDA 1313424. Now, astronomers have revealed the spectacular result of this record-breaking collision: nine starry rings, which is six more than any other galaxy known to scientists.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope detected eight of those rings, and data from the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii confirmed a ninth. The team also suspects the collision might have formed a bygone tenth ring. In the words of Forbes’ Amanda Kooser, “the smaller galaxy not only put a ring on it, it put at least nine rings on it.”
The blue dwarf galaxy (seen on LEDA 1313424’s left in the image) shot through the Bullseye like an arrow. The impact moved material both inward and outward and triggered new regions of stellar formation, creating ripples akin to when you drop a pebble in water. Over time, the galaxy’s stars “piled up” into rings. Now, the blue dwarf galaxy has fled 130,000 light-years away from its victim.
“We’re catching the Bullseye at a very special moment in time,” Pieter G. van Dokkum, an astronomer at Yale University and a co-author of the new study, says in a statement from NASA. “There’s a very narrow window after the impact when a galaxy like this would have so many rings.”