Amazing photos reveal this strange cosmic phenomenon!

The Hoag Object is a strange and extremely rare ring-shaped galaxy. It is located 600 million light-years from Earth and was discovered by astronomer Arthur A. Hough (1921-1999) in 1950. It is slightly larger than our Milky Way Galaxy and has a diameter of about 120,000 light-years. After several decades, This cosmic event captured by the Hubble Space Telescope (NASA) continues to interest scientists regarding its origin. Why ?

To this day, astronomers do not know how the Hoag object formed. If you look closely at the constellation Serpent, you can see a galaxy within a galaxy, which itself is located within another galaxy.

In the images taken by NASA's Hubble Telescope, We can see a bright ring of billions of young blue stars forming a perfect circle around a smaller, denser ball of red stars, perhaps even older. And in the dark space between the two circles of stars, another ring-shaped galaxy is also hiding, very far away from us.

To this day, astronomers still do not know the cause of this extremely rare cosmic phenomenon. After all, ring galaxies – like the Hoag object – It represents less than 0.1% of all existing galaxies. But what is a ring galaxy?

In reality, Ring galaxies are regular disk-shaped galaxies Which was distorted after colliding with a small galaxy billions of years ago.

Different theories about the formation of the Hogg body

At the time of its discovery, it was suggested that the Hoag object might be a planetary nebula, but this hypothesis was quickly ruled out. It was later confirmed that it was in fact a galaxy.

Arthur Hoag suggested that the formation of rings is simply an optical illusion caused by gravitational lensing, It is an effect that occurs when objects with large mass bend and amplify light. But subsequent studies refuted this hypothesis.

Another hypothesis suggests that the Hoag object was once a disk-shaped galaxy. After colliding with a smaller neighboring galaxy, Over the past 3 billion years. The collision would have produced an intense wave in the disk that would have resulted in a characteristic ring shape (Imagine a hole in the “belly” of the disk), which permanently distorts the force of gravity.

However, if the collision actually occurred within the past three billion years, Astronomers should be able to observe the consequences, but no evidence has been found. If the cosmic collision had actually occurred at the center of this galaxy, it would likely have occurred much longer ago, causing all traces of it to disappear.

What is certain is that astronomers have not yet clarified the origin of this interesting cosmic phenomenon. in this time, The Hoag object is one of the greatest mysteries of the universe, because no one knows for sure how it formed.