Astronomers have found a rectangular galaxy in a wide field-of-view image taken with the Japanese Subaru Telescope for Swinburne astrophysicist Dr. Lee Spitler.
The unusual cosmic phenomenon was discovered 70 million light years away within a group of 250 galaxies.
“In the Universe around us, most galaxies exist in one of three forms – spheroidal, disc-like, or lumpy and irregular in appearance,” said Associate Professor Alister Graham from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia.
“It’s one of those things that just makes you smile because it shouldn’t exist, or rather you don’t expect it to exist,” he added.
“It’s a little like the precarious Leaning Tower of Pisa or the discovery of some exotic new species which at first glance appears to defy the laws of nature.”
“One of the reasons this emerald cut galaxy was hard to find is due to its dwarf-like status – it has 50 times less stars than our own Milky Way galaxy, plus its distance from us is equivalent to that spanned by 700 Milky Way galaxies placed end-to-end.
“Curiously, if the orientation was just right, when our own disc-shaped galaxy collides with the disc-shaped Andromeda galaxy about three billion years from now we may find ourselves the inhabitants of a square-looking galaxy.”
cool find
The universe never ceases to amaze me. Think of the wonders that await for future generations when space exploration is done by many and not
just a chosen few. Blows my mind... S+F
shaped 