The discovery of a hydrogen ring said to be nearly four times the size of the Milky Way has proved to be groundbreaking but puzzling for astronomers who have only seen such a phenomenon in one other instance.
A team led by Omkar Bait, a doctoral student at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA) working under the supervision of Yogesh Wadadekar in Pune, India, recently detected a massive neutral hydrogen ring in a galaxy dubbed AGC 203001 and located some 260 million light-years from Earth.
Scientists noted “the Leo ring” – discovered by radio astronomers in 1983 – is the only other case of such a structure. However, even with its similarities, AGC 203001’s ring has proved to be a mystery for experts.
“Conventionally, off-centred rings have been explained by a collision with an ‘intruder’ galaxy leading to expanding density waves of gas and stars in the form of a ring,” the team wrote.
Being that astronomers know that neutral hydrogen emits approximately 21-centimeter radio waves, they hope to find more rings in far-off galaxies to make sense of both the Leo and newest hydrogen ring.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
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