here are fantastic images of this strange galaxy

Hoag’s Object is a strange and extremely rare ring-shaped galaxy located 600 million light-years from Earth., discovered in 1950 by astronomer Arthur A. Hoag (1921-1999). It is slightly larger than our Milky Way and has a diameter of about 120,000 light years.

Several decades later, this is a cosmic event taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (NASA) continues to intrigue scientists about its origin. Because?

To this day, astronomers do not know how Hoag’s Object formed. If you look closely at the Constellation Serpens, you will see a galaxy inside another galaxy, which in turn is inside another galaxy.

In images taken by NASA’s Hubble Telescope, you can see a bright ring of billions of young blue stars which form a perfect circle around a smaller, denser sphere of red stars, probably older. Another ring-shaped galaxy also lurks in the dark space between the two circles of stars.much further from us.

To this day, astronomers still don’t know what caused this extremely rare cosmic phenomenon. After all, ring galaxies -as Hoag’s Object- They make up less than 0.1 percent of all existing galaxies.. But what are ring galaxies?

In fact, ring galaxies were ordinary galaxies disc-shaped which were deformed after colliding with a small galaxy billions of years ago.

Various theories of the formation of the Hoag Object

At the time of its opening It has been suggested that Hoag’s Object may be a planetary nebula.but this hypothesis was quickly rejected and it was later confirmed that it was in fact a galaxy.

Arthur Hoag suggested that the formation of the rings was nothing more than an optical illusion caused by gravitational lensing., an effect that occurs when bodies of large mass bend and magnify light. However, later studies refuted this hypothesis.

This is Hoag’s Object or PGC 54559, an atypical galaxy of a type known as a ring galaxy located about 600 million light-years away in the constellation Serpens. #astronomy #space #constellations pic.twitter.com/LKAPmLv4aB

— Enrique Coperias (@CienciaDelCope) February 19, 2024

Another hypothesis suggests that Hoag’s Object was once disk-shaped due to a collision with a nearby galaxy. the smallest at some point in the last 3 billion years. The collision would cause a density wave in the disk that would result in a characteristic ring shape (think of a hole in the “belly” of the disk), permanently distorting its gravitational force.

However, if the collision did occur in the last three billion years, astronomers should be able to observe the aftermath, and no evidence has been found. If there had actually been a cosmic collision at the center of this galaxy, it would likely have happened much sooner.which would lead to the disappearance of any evidence.

The truth is that astronomers have not yet unraveled the origins of this intriguing cosmic phenomenon. Until the date Hoag’s Object – One of the Universe’s Greatest Mysteriessince no one knows exactly how it was formed.