LEDA 1000714 is a

ring galaxy A ring galaxy is a galaxy with a circle-like appearance. Hoag's Object, discovered by Art Hoag in 1950, is an example of a ring galaxy. The ring contains many massive, relatively young blue stars, which are extremely bright. The central region co ...

in the

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The origins of the e ...

Crater Crater may refer to: Landforms *Impact crater, a depression caused by two celestial bodies impacting each other, such as a meteorite hitting a planet *Explosion crater, a hole formed in the ground produced by an explosion near or below the surfac ...

. LEDA 1000714 is one of a very rare group of galaxies called Hoag-type galaxies, named after the prototype,

Hoag's Object Hoag's Object is an unusual ring galaxy in the constellation of Serpens Caput. It is named after Arthur Hoag, who discovered it in 1950 and identified it as either a planetary nebula or a peculiar galaxy. The galaxy has approximately eight bill ...

– it is estimated that roughly 0.1% of all galaxies are this type. LEDA 1000714 is unusual because it is a Hoag-type galaxy with two nearly round rings, but with different characteristics. It has been nicknamed Burçin's Galaxy, after

Burçin Mutlu-Pakdil Burçin Mutlu-Pakdil is a Turkish-American astrophysicist, and Assistant Professor at Dartmouth College. She formerly served as a National Science Foundation (NSF) and Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics (KICP) Postdoctoral Fellow at the Uni ...

, the leader of the photometric study of this galaxy.

Structure

The structure and photometry of LEDA 1000714 was studied with significant detail in 2017. The core of the galaxy appears to be similar to an elliptical galaxy, and is almost perfectly round, not flattened into a disk. Unlike some

ring galaxies A ring galaxy is a galaxy with a circle-like appearance. Hoag's Object, discovered by Art Hoag in 1950, is an example of a ring galaxy. The ring contains many massive, relatively young blue stars, which are extremely bright. The central region ...

, the central core shows no signs of a bar structure connecting the outer ring to the center of the galaxy. This is similar to Hoag's Object, and a number of other galaxies have been found that have a perfectly round center. The outer galaxy is relatively bright and contains many luminous stars indicative of star formation. However, upon further inspection of the galaxy, it was found that inside the outer ring there is also a faint, diffuse, red inner ring closer to the core. The outer ring appears to be fairly young, at about 0.13 billion years old, while the core is much older, at 5.5 billion years old. The age of the inner ring is, as yet, undetermined. This makes the galaxy even more unusual, possibly making it one of a kind. The details of the formation of Hoag-type objects are still largely unknown. It has been suggested that the near-perfect core of Hoag's Object formed from a sort of "bar instability" where the central bar structure decays into a rounder core. It may also be due to another galaxy. In the case of LEDA 1000714, because its two rings have significantly different ages, the galaxy's morphology may have come from an anomalous collision with another galaxy, however more data is needed to draw conclusions.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:LEDA 1000714 Ring galaxies Crater (constellation) 1000714