Dancing Mice and Bunny-Eared Jellyfish Galaxies — 6 Strange Shapes of Our Universe

The Universe is chock-full of oddities: stars that blink in and out without explanation, galaxies that eat one another, black holes gone rogue. It’s no surprise that among the billions of galaxies out there in the cosmos, some of them are going to look like oddballs.

From star formation to the gravitational pull of surrounding galaxies to entire collisions themselves, these are the forces that shape our Universe. In particular, research has found that star births can strongly influence galactic environments, as stars form out of surrounding dust and gas. From UV radiation that heats the surrounding gas to stellar winds that pressure and blow cavities through said gas, where this gas goes in turn can shape the evolution of galaxies.

According to NASA, your typical galaxy can be classified into a few given shapes. There’s the spiral of our very own Milky Way, a broad and common class of galaxies typically consisting of a center bulge or bar, with additional arms spinning out. 

There are also elliptical galaxies, which are rounder or more oblong in shape with less definition than spiral galaxies. Lenticular galaxies are somewhat of a mix between the previous two, lacking spiraling arms and the ability to continually form new stars.

Then, there are irregular galaxies, which cannot be neatly categorized. Kicking our creative visions into gear, these galaxies can be shaped like jellyfish, toothpicks, or tadpoles. Here are six more known galaxies with the strangest shapes in our Universe.

With arms spinning like the spokes of a wheel, this galaxy, somewhat resembling a pinwheel or even a giant frisbee, was spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope, about 500 million light years away from us. 

Called a collisional ring galaxy, its shape and structure are the result of violent interactions between a larger spiral galaxy and a smaller one, with the impact resulting in shockwaves leaving the aptly named Cartwheel Galaxy with one bright inner ring housing many young star clusters, as well as a second, continually expanding outer ring. This creates one of the most extreme environments in which stars can form.

Read More: A Jellyfish Galaxy With Bunny Ears Wades Through Space 300 Million Light-Years Away

What looks like a giant glowing penguin or a jumping porpoise was actually once a normal spiral galaxy, named NGC 2936, that got too close to its neighbor. Due to the gravitational pull and interactions with a nearby elliptical galaxy, this once regularly shaped galaxy has been morphed and pulled into the body of a “penguin.” Its bright blue beak is actually a collection of young stars, with the galactic center of NGC 2936 remaining as its shiny white eye.

This starry-eyed penguin in the cosmos was spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope, and astronomers anticipate that eventually, the two colliding galaxies will merge completely.

Earlier in June, astronomers unveiled their discovery of a galaxy resembling a bunny-eared jellyfish, bobbing through the currents of the Universe. Named NGC 4858, this galaxy was formed under extreme conditions as it moved through the Coma galaxy cluster, which is essentially a cauldron of hot gas, extreme “wind” pressure, and many other galactic companions.

As NGC 4858 moved through this cluster, the wind or “ram pressure” began to strip away its interior gas, leaving it thinner and longer, to the point of resembling a wispy jellyfish. Similarly, its bunny ears are also the result of ram pressure and distortion.

With a central bulge consisting of yellow stars resembling the slightly off-center yolk of an egg fried sunny-side up, NGC 2276 is yet another example of an asymmetric galaxy. Scientists believe this distortion is because of a nearby galaxy, NGC 2300, that’s tugging more strongly on only one side of the galaxy.

Other factors shaping this galactic egg could be the same ram pressure that formed the jellyfish galaxy discovered this year, which might play an even bigger role in shaping the galaxy than tidal interactions.

Astronomers have also noted the unusually intense star formation taking place in NGC 2276 along its western side, which could be the result of a previous confrontation with a smaller galaxy or NGC 2276’s interactions with the hot gas contained in galaxy clusters.

Captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, this galaxy pair resembles a couple of mice dancing around one another, complete with long, wispy blue tails of stars and gas. These spiral galaxies are in the process of colliding and will eventually merge completely. At the moment, though, NGC 4676 contains many clusters of young blue stars, whose formation was triggered by gravitational interactions. The pair is further connected by a stream of material flowing between the two.

Sporting nine rings, the galaxy LEDA 1313424 even features a smaller dwarf galaxy piercing through its central heart. With eight rings originally identified by Hubble astronomers and then a ninth by the Keck Observatory, the Bullseye Galaxy is the visual result of the shockwave impact resulting from this galactic collision, similarly to how the surface of water will ripple outward in increasingly wide distances after a disturbance. 

With time, the rings of the Bullseye Galaxy will continue spreading outward and forming stars. Although the Universe is crowded and contact between galaxies is inevitable, this is a unique instance in which one galaxy has passed straight through the center of another.

Read More: Dueling Galaxies Pierce One Another With a Ray of Radiation in a Cosmic Joust

Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:

• PBS. Scientists Just Discovered a Rogue Black Hole Wandering in Deep Space

• Physics Today. How stars shape galaxies

• NASA. Galaxy Types

• NASA. Webb Captures Stellar Gymnastics in The Cartwheel Galaxy

• Astronomy and Astrophysics. Understanding the unusual life of the Cartwheel galaxy using stellar populations

• NASA. Astronomy Picture of the Day

• The Astrophysical Journal Letters. ALMA-JELLY. I. High Resolution CO(2–1) Observations of Ongoing Ram Pressure Stripping in NGC 4858 Reveal Asymmetrical Gas Tail Formation and Fallback

• NASA. Hubble Views Lopsided Galaxy NGC 2276

• Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. NGC 2276: a remarkable galaxy with a large number of ultraluminous X-ray sources

• NASA. The Mice – NGC 4676

• The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The Bullseye: HST, Keck/KCWI, and Dragonfly Characterization of a Giant Nine-ringed Galaxy

Katie Liu is a science journalist covering a variety of topics for Discover, ranging from space to human health to archaeology, among others. Her interest in science writing began during her time at Northwestern University, from where she graduated in 2024.