Bullseye! Yale-led team finds a giant galaxy with a record nine rings

A Yale-led research group has discovered “Bullseye,” a galaxy with nine rings that may help astronomers better understand galaxy evolution and dark matter.

A Yale-led team of astronomers has discovered a cosmic rarity: a super-sized galaxy with nine concentric rings.

Officially known as LEDA 1313424, the “Bullseye” galaxy got its rings about 50 million years ago after a much smaller galaxy collided with its midsection — like a cosmic dart landing dead center in a game of Knockout at the local pub.

“The collision triggered the creation of nine beautiful, symmetrical rings, which are now expanding outwards, carrying gas away from the center,” said Imad Pasha, a Yale doctoral student in astronomy and lead author of a new study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“This galaxy breaks the record for most rings discovered in this type of system, a confluence of catching it at a lucky time, at a lucky orientation, and arising from a lucky collision configuration,” Pasha said.

Pasha had been looking at a ground-based imaging survey when he initially spotted the galaxy, which had several clear rings. He and his colleagues did more research — identifying eight rings using data from NASA’s Hubble Telescope and a ninth ring using data from the Keck Cosmic Web Imager at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The team also used data from the Dragonfly Telephoto Array in New Mexico.

“We’re catching the Bullseye at a very special moment in time,” said Pieter van Dokkum, the Sol Goldman Family Professor of Astronomy and professor of physics in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and co-author of the new study. “There’s a very narrow window after the impact when a galaxy like this would have so many rings.”

Read the full article by Jim Shelton on YaleNews