THE IMPOSSIBLE GALAXY
The universe is a gorgeous place, but some images have a greater power to stop you in your tracks than others. “Hoag’s Object is fascinating because of its aesthetic value; it’s just a beautiful thing,” Dr Noah Brosch tells All About Space about one particular intergalactic gem. Indeed, one glimpse at its perfect circular ring of blue stars around a golden central ball and there’s no denying that most people would find it hard to tear their eyes away.
The ring-shaped galaxy was discovered by American astronomer Arthur Hoag in 1950. He had been working at the US Naval Observatory and originally thought the object was an ejection of ionised gas from a red giant star in its last throes of life – a planetary nebula.
Rejecting his own hunch on the grounds that the ring’s light was not being emitted at the expected wavelengths, he later theorised that the whole thing may have simply been an Einstein ring – an optical illusion caused by gravitational lensing of the source’s light. After all, in the very early images of
