Black Holes, Colliding Galaxies and a Mysterious Ring

A look at three of the strangest galaxies known to astronomy

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We are fortunate to live in an era where our eyes on the universe are more powerful than ever before. Modern telescopes peer across vast distances, look back billions of years, and unveil objects no human has ever seen before.

Many of those objects are stunning. We’ve seen stars born from clouds of dust, detected black holes as they rip their victims apart, and spotted the dying moments of supermassive stars. We’ve watched galaxies dance to the mysterious music of dark matter, and so form a grand choreography of super clusters, filaments and galactic walls.

In short, we see a lot of interesting things out there. In this article, I have selected a few of the most awesome things we know of. And though the pictures alone are incredible, I’ll give you the background of what you are seeing, how they came to be, and how astronomers capture them.

Though there are billions of galaxies out there, and we have catalogued millions of them, some of them stand out as particularly strange. They have drawn the attention of astronomers, who have gone to great efforts to examine them and explain what is going on, and why.

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Centaurus A

Credit:ESO/WFI (Optical); MPIfR/ESO/APEX/A.Weiss et al. (Submillimetre); NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Kraft et al. (X-ray)

One of the closest and brightest galaxies in the night sky also stands out as one of the oddest. Not only is the shape of the galaxy rather strange — with a thick disk and jets of some kind shooting out — but it also gives out powerful radio waves.