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"This is amazing!" The Hubble Space Telescope spotted an "bullseye" in deep space
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has managed to capture an incredible image of a galaxy that looks like a bullseye. Imad Pasha, a lead researcher and doctoral student at Yale University in New Haven (USA), called the discovery amazing.
After a collision, there is a very narrow window when a galaxy like this one can have so many rings, Space writes. The eight ripples that the telescope captured in this space scene are the largest ever seen in any galaxy, and the data from the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii actually confirmed the ninth.
The small blue dwarf galaxy (seen in the image in the center left) pierced the massive bullseye, officially named LEDA 1313424, a galaxy almost twice the size of the Milky Way.
Galactic collisions occur frequently in the universe, but researchers emphasize that the phenomenon of one galaxy passing directly through the center of another is very rare. The blue dwarf galaxy not only left behind eight "ripples," or rings filled with stars, similar to those formed when a rock breaks the surface of a pond but also caused new areas of star formation in LEDA 1313424. This occurred when gas was ejected outward as it passed through the galaxy, mixing with dust to form new stars and illuminate the rings.
"I was looking at a ground-based image, and when I saw a galaxy with several clear rings, I was immediately drawn to it. It's an amazing feeling," says Imad Pasha.
According to study co-author Pieter van Dokkum, there is a very narrow window after a collision when a galaxy like this one can have so many rings.
Previously, astronomers have been able to detect at most three rings in similar collisions. The team also suspects that a tenth ring may have once existed, but has since disappeared beyond detection. The researchers estimate that the ring could lie three times further away than the widest ring captured in the Hubble image.
Scientists believe that the first two rings in the bullseye formed quickly and spread in wider circles. Subsequent rings could have formed in a more staggered fashion, as the passage of the blue dwarf galaxy had a greater impact on the initial rings.
"If we were to look at the galaxy directly, the rings would look round, with the rings clustered in the center and gradually moving further apart the further away," Pasha explained. The scientist added that more research is needed, but it is already clear that this discovery will help improve modeling. They are waiting for NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope to start working, because, according to them, then interesting objects will be much easier to detect.
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