Featured Image: Identifying Weird Galaxies

The above image (click for the full view) shows PanSTARRS observations of some of the 185 galaxies identified in a recent study as “ring galaxies” — bizarre and rare irregular galaxies that exhibit stars and gas in a ring around a central nucleus. Ring galaxies could be formed in a number of ways; one theory is that some might form in a galaxy collision when a smaller galaxy punches through the center of a larger one, triggering star formation around the center. In a recent study, Ian Timmis and Lior Shamir of Lawrence Technological University in Michigan explore ways that we may be able to identify ring galaxies in the overwhelming number of images expected from large upcoming surveys. They develop a computer analysis method that automatically finds ring galaxy candidates based on their visual appearance, and they test their approach on the 3 million galaxy images from the first PanSTARRS data release. To see more of the remarkable galaxies the authors found and to learn more about their identification method, check out the paper below.

Citation

Ian Timmis and Lior Shamir 2017 ApJS 231 2. doi:10.3847/1538-4365/aa78a3