NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a strange, mixed-up galaxy that is spinning in two different directions at once.
The galaxy, called NGC 4698, sits about 55 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, so this galaxy is extremely far from Earth.
What makes NGC 4698 so unusual is that the stars and gas near its centre rotate perpendicular, or side-on, to the rest of the galaxy’s disk. Its spiral arms also only appear in the outer parts of the galaxy, forming a ring shape, instead of stretching all the way to the centre like most spiral galaxies.
Astronomers think a small galactic merger, or a flow of gas from outside, may have caused this unusual, mixed-up structure to form around the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s centre.
The discovery was announced on 18 September 2026. NGC 4698 belongs to the Virgo Cluster, a huge group containing more than 1,000 galaxies, which scientists are studying to learn how galaxies change and grow over time.
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