An anomaly from Hubble’s archive — Merging galaxies 1

This is a previously-undiscovered astrophysical anomaly, found in the Hubble Space Telescope’s archive by researchers using a new AI-assisted method. The AI tool allowed them to sift through nearly 100 million image cutouts in just days, turning up rare and anomalous objects like this one.

This oval-shaped galaxy is perhaps most striking for the long, thin beam of light stretching across its centre. This is thought to be the result of a galaxy merger. A less conspicuous feature is the small arc of light just below the galaxy’s core. This is thought to be the secondary galaxy in the merger, or a potential image formed by gravitational lensing, where the mass of the foreground galaxy has bent light from a distant galaxy behind it to create the small arc of light.

Read more about this new research here.

[Image description: A small image of an elliptical galaxy. It is bright in the centre and a beam of light crosses it on the long axis. The rest of the galaxy is lit by the pale gold glow from the centre. Below the centre sits a small arc of light with a bright spot on it.]