Before the pioneering work of 2025 who discovered the Bullseye galaxy, which is shown here, no galaxy had more than three concentric rings discovered within it. The Bullseye galaxy has at least 9, and potentially more that have vanished, due to a galactic collision that occurred a shortage of 50 million years ago. (Credit: NASA, ESA, IMAD Pasha (Yale), Pieter van Dokkum (Yale))
Ring galaxies are rare, but we believe we know how they form. A new early stage version, Bullseye Galaxy, provides a new test field.
Throughout the universe, galaxies come in four main types.
At a 36X Zoom level, Euclid’s first mosaic contains the distant galaxy cluster but abundant Abell 3381, which presents a bright galaxies similar to Markarian’s chain in Virgo’s group. Spirals and elliptics are the most common type of galaxy, with many others that interact forming transitory, irregular and peculiar forms. However, galaxies will rarely appear with a configuration similar to the ring, such as the one at the top, approximately 25% of the path of the right image. (Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, CEA Paris-Saclay; PROCESSING: J.-C. CUILLANDRE, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi)
Spiral and elliptics describe more common normal galaxies.
Many small or interactive galaxies become irregularly.
The Galaxy NGC 3077 of low dough, dusty and irregular is actively forming new stars, has a very blue center and has a hydrogen gas bridge that connects it to the nearest and most massive M81. As one of the 34 galaxies in group M81, it is an example of the most common type of galaxy in the universe: much smaller and lower in mass, but much more numerous, than galaxies such as our Milky Way. Young stars within it have formed from gas deposits still present within this galaxy, indicating a “living” galaxy. (Credit: That/hubble and nasa)
This X -ray/optical compound image shows the Galaxy AM 0644-741 ring along with a wide field view of its surroundings. Below the left of this ring galaxy there is a poor ellipsoidal galaxy that may have hit the ringed galaxy a few hundred million years before. The formation and subsequent evolution of a ring of new stars of gas spreading from the center would be expected, such as waves in a pond. (Credit: X -rays: NASA/CXC/INAF/A. Wolter et al; Optic: NASA/STSCI)
Only 1 in 10,000 galaxies are rings: defined by circular stars collections beyond the main galactic body.
