Astronomers have discovered a new ring galaxy which arose from a galactic collision, 30 million light years away from Earth.
The newly discovered ring galaxy is seven times closer than anything found before, and forty times closer than the most famous example of collisional ring galaxies, the ‘Cartwheel’ galaxy, researchers said.
The galaxy was found by chance by astronomers led by Professor Quentin Parker at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and Professor Albert Zijlstra at the University of Manchester, during a special wide-field survey of the Southern Milky Way.
The ring is 30 million light years away and is called “Kathryn’s wheel”, named after the famous fireworks that it resembles and Zijlstra’s wife Kathryn.
Kathryn’s Wheel is located behind a dense star field and close to a very bright foreground star, which is why it had not been noted before.