HOW ODD

There are many other weirdly formed galaxies out there

It looks like a

penguin

NGC 2936 is 326 million light years away and it resembles a penguin,

porpoise or dolphin depending on whose opinion you seek. It’s actually a two-galaxy system, with an eggshaped galaxy beneath

called NGC 2937.

Tip your hat to

this one

NGC 4594 is known as the Sombrero because it resembles a widebrimmed hat with a bulge in the centre and a dark dust lane around it. Just 28 million light years from Earth, that bulge comprises several

star clusters.

A giant tadpole

of a galaxy

This disrupted galaxy

was identified by astronomers from Israel,

the US and Russia. Created by a cosmic collision, the image shows an elliptical head and a long, straight tail that is 500,000 light

years long.

A pair of eyes

in the sky

Looking like an evil pair of eyes, NGC 2207 and IC 2163 are colliding spiral galaxies in the constellation Canis Major. The eyelids were formed by dust and stars following the interaction between the

two galaxies.

Have a heart – or two

Spiral galaxy NGC 7674 has been seen to have a

couple of radio jets with an S-shape. This

could indicate the presence of a binary black hole. In this case,

they would be a light year apart. The galaxy is

likely a merger.

These galaxies are interacting

The peculiar spiral

NGC 3808A and the irregular NGC 3808B are known collectively as Arp 87 and they’re perhaps in a pre-merge state, having been very close to smashing into each other a few billion years ago.

A supernova supersite

Messier 83 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Hydra that’s so bright it can be viewed using binoculars. Known as the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, its swirls of pink and purple are punctuated by six observed supernovae.

The universe’s most luminous galaxy

An extremely luminous infrared galaxy, W22460526 is 350 trillion times as bright as the Sun. In 2018 scientists observed it stripping close to half the mass of at least three of its smaller neighbours.

A highly energetic galaxy

The elliptical galaxy NGC 474 in the constellation of Pisces shows multiple layers of emission that could be tidal tails related to debris that has been left over from the absorption of many small galaxies.

Galaxies devoid of dark matter

That’s what astronomers saw in a wide-field imaging survey of the ultra-diffuse galaxy

NGC 1052-DF2. Despite being as large as the Milky Way it has 200-times fewer stars, making it appear translucent.