February 1, 2017

NGC 4861 (Image ESA/Hubble & NASA)

A team of researchers proposed an explanation for the strange appearance of the galaxy NGC 4861, which has the characteristics of a barred spiral galaxy but it looks more like a dwarf irregular galaxy. It’s possible that there’s an ongoing production of charged particle jets during a star formation phase with the generation of galactic winds that explain the strange shape of NGC 4861, similar to a comet.