Astronomers Discover Galaxy with Record-Breaking Nine Rings

The Bullseye Galaxy's concentric rings formed after a smaller galaxy passed through its center 50 million years ago, offering new insights into galactic collisions.

The Bullseye Galaxy, officially known as LEDA 1313424, has nine rings, the most ever observed in a galaxy, with eight identified by Hubble and a ninth confirmed by Keck Observatory data.
The rings were created by a smaller blue dwarf galaxy that pierced through the Bullseye's core, triggering waves of star formation and leaving a thin gas trail linking the two galaxies, now 130,000 light-years apart.
The galaxy is 250,000 light-years across, making it 2.5 times larger than the Milky Way, and its rings are unevenly spaced, with inner rings clustered and outer rings more spread out.
The discovery validates long-standing theoretical models predicting how rings propagate outward following such collisions, with the first two rings forming rapidly and subsequent rings appearing in staggered intervals.
Researchers believe the Bullseye may have once had a tenth ring and anticipate that future telescopes like NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will uncover more galaxies with similar structures.