New research reveals how an unusual celestial object resembling a cosmic “bullseye” could offer clues to one of the most perplexing phenomena in our universe.

The research, undertaken by physicists Pierre Sikivie and Yuxin Zhao at the University of Florida, focuses on an astronomical feature quite unlike any other—the galaxy LEDA 1313424, whose concentric rings have garnered it the apt nickname of the “Bullseye galaxy.”

Based on Sikivie and Zhao’s recent research, detailed in a new paper that appeared in The Astrophysical Journal, quantum behavior related to long-mysterious dark matter may hold the key to the galaxy’s unusual appearance.

Unraveling a Bullseye Galaxy’s Circular Secrets

In the past, astronomers have attempted to explain LEDA 1313424’s unusual concentric appearance as the likely result of an ancient collision between two galaxies.

Not so, according to Sikivie and Zhao, who now take a vastly different approach by arguing that a better explanation may involve a Bose-Einstein condensate of axions, a variety of extremely light hypothetical particles.

This concept has much deeper roots that go back close to a century ago, when the first galaxy featuring an unusual concentric ring was discovered. This example, dubbed the Cartwheel galaxy, was only the first in a succession of similar astronomical discoveries involving galaxies with “ringed” appearances that incorporate as many as three annular features.

Unraveling an Annular Enigma

Explaining why these galaxies look this way has remained elusive. One theory proposed by astronomers, as noted earlier, involves impacts between two galaxies, which could create waves of density whose ripples become evident in ring-like structures surrounding the resulting galaxies.

However, a discovery in 2025 by Imad Pasha, a Yale University astronomer, and his colleagues presented an even stranger development in this ongoing concentric saga: the discovery of a galaxy that possesses not three rings, but nine of them. With its discovery, this remarkable celestial object’s unusual appearance garnered the nickname now familiar to us: “The Bullseye galaxy.”

One theory that astronomers believed may account for the galaxy’s nine concentric structures had been a hypothetical impact—and a very energetic one—that occurred about 56 million years ago. However, while investigating this possibility, Sikivie and Zhao say a problem emerged: this would mean that the outermost ring in the galaxy would have had to travel at a speed of 758 miles per second as it blasted outward from the galaxy’s center.

This speed, they say, is impossible to reconcile with what astronomers can already discern about the nature of the supposed collusion, as well as the well-characterized behavior of galactic material observed in other regions of the cosmos.

An Alternative Approach

In an effort to get to the bottom of the mystery behind this unique galaxy, Sikivie and Zhao have put forward an alternative idea: that the rings in the Bullseye galaxy might instead be a byproduct of dark matter’s mysterious properties.

According to astronomers, dark matter is believed to be a nonluminous material that populates our universe, contributing around 85% of its total mass. Despite its ubiquity, direct detections that could confirm its existence have remained elusive.

However, there are some intriguing cosmic phenomena that astronomers are aware of that are very good candidates for being indirect evidence of this mysterious material. These observations include gravitational motion that occurs in galaxies, whereby the accumulation of dark matter is believed to manifest in the appearance of spherical halos encircling them.

In the past, Sikivie has explored this possibility, and whether current prevailing theories about dark matter, such as the idea that hypothetical particles known as axions, may offer the best interpretation of the physical reality behind dark matter.

If dark matter is indeed related to axions, it would also be required to obey what astrophysicists call conservation of angular momentum. According to Sikivie, when axions and galaxies interact, a phenomenon should emerge where portions of dark matter halos closest to the center would become oriented in structural forms known as “caustic rings.”

“We had earlier proposed that disk galaxies have caustic rings of dark matter with a pattern of ring radii, very similar to the pattern of ring radii observed in LEDA 1313424,” Sikivie recently said.

With this idea in mind, Sikivie and Lhao then turned their attention to the mysterious bullseye of LEDA 1313424 and “fitted the observed ring radii to the pattern of ring radii in the caustic ring interpretation,” from which they discerned that “LEDA’s rings are the imprint of caustic rings of dark matter on the baryonic matter in LEDA’s disk.”

Strange Quantum Behaviors

A further aspect of the researchers’ theory involves the quantum behavior that axions are expected to engage in.

Under extremely cold conditions, these hypothetical dark matter particles could collectively occupy the same quantum state, forming what is known as a Bose-Einstein condensate—a strange state of matter in which quantum effects become visible on macroscopic scales.

According to the team, such a condensate could interact with ordinary matter in ways that match astronomical observations. If the duo is correct, this could imply that ring-shaped galaxies such as LEDA may not result from galactic collisions at all—instead, these unique cosmic structures might be evidence of dark matter axions that have undergone Bose-Einstein condensation.

Presently, much like dark matter, axions have remained hypothetical and frustratingly difficult to detect. Of course, given their elusiveness, this also makes them a very good candidate in terms of helping scientists close in on the dark matter mystery, and new models are helping to provide potentially compelling new resolutions for such problems.

For now, mysterious ringed galaxies remain mysterious. However, as the work of researchers like Sikivie and Lhao progresses, one of astronomy’s more unusual recent discoveries is gradually coming into focus, while providing fresh insight into the intriguing quantum nature of dark matter.

The team’s recent paper, “The Nine Rings of the Galaxy LEDA 1313424,” appeared in The Astrophysical Journal.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

On June 19, 2004, at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, astronomers Roy Tucker, David Tholen, and Fabrizio Bernardi discovered Asteroid Apophis. This Near-Earth Object (NEO), approximately 1,099 to 1,230 feet (335 to 375 meters) wide, reached the highest ever rating of level 4 out of 10 on the Torino Impact Hazard Scale,Continue reading "June 19, 2004: Astroid Apophis is discovered"

The post June 19, 2004: Astroid Apophis is discovered appeared first on Astronomy Magazine.

A new cosmic bounce model suggests that remnants from a pre-Big Bang Universe may still exist today. What if some of the Universe’s oldest objects are actually older than the Big Bang itself? A new study from the University of Portsmouth suggests that ancient black holes may have survived from a time before the Universe [...]

WALLOPS ISLAND, Virginia—Just 10 months ago, NASA asked three companies if they could do something nobody had done before. Could they build and launch a satellite to save a $500 million astronomy mission at risk of crashing back to Earth? What's more, could they do it in less than a year on a tight budget?

Katalyst Space Technologies, a startup founded in 2020, presented the most compelling solution. "They came back with a response that was technically and programmatically plausible, and then we were like, 'Yeah, let’s do it,'" said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA's astrophysics division.

That was in August of last year. In September, NASA awarded Katalyst a $30 million contract to build, test, and launch a small satellite to chase down Swift and latch onto it with three robotic arms. Then, Katalyst's Link servicing spacecraft will boost Swift's orbit back to a safe operating altitude, allowing it to resume scientific observations. Easier said than done.

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© NASA/Scott Wiessinger

WALLOPS ISLAND, Va.—Just 10 months ago, NASA asked three companies if they could do something nobody had done before. Could they build and launch a satellite to save a $500 million astronomy mission at risk of crashing back to Earth? What's more, could they do it in less than a year on a tight budget?

Katalyst Space Technologies, a startup founded in 2020, presented the most compelling solution. "They came back with a response that was technically and programmatically plausible, and then we were like, 'Yeah, let’s do it,'" said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA's astrophysics division.

That was in August of last year. In September, NASA awarded Katalyst a $30 million contract to build, test, and launch a small satellite to chase down Swift and latch onto it with three robotic arms. Then, Katalyst's Link servicing spacecraft will boost Swift's orbit back to a safe operating altitude, allowing it to resume scientific observations. Easier said than done.

Read full article

Comments

© NASA/Scott Wiessinger

WALLOPS ISLAND, Va.—Just 10 months ago, NASA asked three companies if they could do something nobody had done before. Could they build and launch a satellite to save a $500 million astronomy mission at risk of crashing back to Earth? What's more, could they do it in less than a year on a tight budget?

Katalyst Space Technologies, a startup founded in 2020, presented the most compelling solution. "They came back with a response that was technically and programmatically plausible, and then we were like, 'Yeah, let’s do it,'" said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA's astrophysics division.

That was in August of last year. In September, NASA awarded Katalyst a $30 million contract to build, test, and launch a small satellite to chase down Swift and latch onto it with three robotic arms. Then, Katalyst's Link servicing spacecraft will boost Swift's orbit back to a safe operating altitude, allowing it to resume scientific observations. Easier said than done.

Read full article

Comments

© NASA/Scott Wiessinger

An extreme exoplanet gives astronomers a rare look at weather changing in real time.

It’s not the kind of thing astronomers expect to see while observing the powerful effects of a distant supermassive black hole: an unprecedented UFO sighting.

However, that’s precisely what one group of scientists now reports in a preprint paper, who detail the successful detection of one of the strongest UFOs—a black hole phenomenon otherwise known as “ultra-fast outflows”—that astronomers may have ever seen.

The landmark detection was made possible with the XMM-Newton space observatory and NuSTAR X-ray telescope, which allowed the researchers behind the discovery to observe a luminous quasar with origins that date back to “cosmic noon,” revealing a pair of outflow wind components being blasted from the black hole in question.

Cosmic Monsters with Major Appetites

Black holes have more than just large appetites for cosmic material: they also produce significant gas-driven winds from around their accretion disk.

These winds become known as ultra-fast outflows (UFOs) when their strength propels them to greater than ten percent of light speed, and astronomers currently believe they are an important part of what helps black holes regulate their growth, which may also hold for their host galaxies.

One way this occurs is that UFOs help to heat galactic gases that give rise to star formation, a quenching process that most astronomers believe occurred during a period called “cosmic noon,” which occurred between 1.6 and 3.5 billion years after the birth of the universe.

Cosmic Fingerprints of Powerful UFOs

Astronomers can detect ultra-fast outflows based on the “dips” they create in their powerful gusts, which are caused by ionized iron present in their outflow gases. These gases also absorb X-rays along their path away from their black hole originators, which leave “fingerprints” in the form of absorption features that are detectable using X-ray telescopes.

Significantly, these “dips” manifest as a blueshift since they are shifted to higher energies as they move at such high speeds (again, roughly 10% of the speed of light). From the blueshifted energy signatures they comprise, astronomers can determine not only the presence of UFOs, but also the wind speed of their gusty outflows.

In the past, most detections of these high-powered cosmic phenomena have relied on gravitationally lensed quasars. These celestial objects occur when a galaxy or similar feature closer to Earth appears in front of them, magnifying the quasar’s light and significantly brightening its luminosity from our Earthly perspective.

However, lensing of this variety can also present problems, and so astronomers led by Giorgio Lanzuisi of INAF Bologna designed a special system to target more than a dozen hyper-luminous quasars at cosmic noon, as a means of getting a better feel for the dynamics of non-lensed quasars.

“WISSHFUL” Thinking

WISSHFUL is an XMM-Newton multi-year heritage program that Lanzuisi and his colleagues designed for this purpose, whose initial target became a quasar designated WISSH13, whose redshift at 3.294 marks the object’s existence as it appeared approximately 2 billion years after the Big Bang.

WISH13’s black hole also weighs in at close to 2 billion times that of our Sun, which causes it to shine far brighter than normally expected for an object of its estimated mass.

Their work began in the autumn of 2024 by combining observations from XMM-Newton and NuSTAR initially obtained in 2017. From these X-ray images of WISSH12, a pair of distinctive absorption features became evident, which the team determined to have been generated by two separate sources from within the same ultra-fast outflow.

These components were found to travel at different speeds: one moving at close to 30% of the speed of light, while the other at only about 10% of light speed. The slower of these two appears to have been an enduring component of the UFO, while the faster one showed signatures that indicated a more recent appearance. This could mean that it emanates from events that are shorter in duration.

By matching theoretical predictions of a layered wind structure surrounding the black hole, the researchers say their observations align with models that indicate a fast-moving inner “spine” launched from the accretion disk’s innermost regions. Meanwhile, a slower outer “sheath” is also believed to emanate farther from the black hole. The combined outflow components produce an estimated 21 to 24 solar masses of material annually.

The Most Massive UFO Ever Observed? 

Such figures, the team says, represent what is believed to be among the most massive and energetic ultrafast outflows ever observed, a discovery which also marks the highest-redshift ultrafast outflow yet detected in a non-lensed quasar.

Despite their remarkable energetic output, the team says these outflow winds seem to conform to the same essential relationships observed in active galaxies much closer to Earth, suggesting that the processes driving these outflows have remained remarkably consistent across cosmic time.

Going forward, the team says they hope to make additional observations of these powerful cosmic phenomena with help from the new Athena X-ray mission, which they say could help uncover similar winds in even more distant quasars.

The team’s discoveries were detailed in a recent paper, “The WISSHFUL program: the highest redshift UFO discovered in a non-lensed QSO,” which appeared at the preprint arXiv.org server.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

Europe's Mars Express orbiter recently imaged a huge valley system on the Red Planet — and dust devils dot the alien landscape.

Sally Ride made history aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger on June 18, 1983, becoming the first American woman in space 20 years nearly to the day after Soviet Valentina Tereshkova’s flight. In 1977, as she was finishing her Ph.D. in physics, Ride saw a newspaper ad placed by NASA to recruit astronauts. For the firstContinue reading "June 18, 1983: Sally Ride is the first American woman in space"

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A new study reveals why black holes let out massive radio "burps" years after eating stars, giving astronomers a chemical blueprint to predict them early.

A new study of two supernova remnants, the debris left behind after stars explode, suggests the explosions came from stellar siblings that once orbited each other. The first star’s detonation sent its binary companion hurtling through space, and then, after traveling for thousands of years, the surviving star blew up too.

“Using 16 years of data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, our analysis uncovered gamma rays associated with a supernova remnant that was hidden in the glare of its neighbor, the Jellyfish Nebula, one of the brightest gamma-ray-emitting supernova remnants known,” said Miltiadis Michailidis, a postdoctoral fellow in the physics department at Stanford University in California. “There are so many striking connections between the two remnants that we conclude they’re likely related, giving us the first known example of a binary system where both stars have undergone supernova explosions.”

Michailidis presented the findings Wednesday at the 248th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Pasadena, California. A paper describing the results will appear in a future edition of Nature Communications.

The study focused on a faint supernova remnant called G189.6+3.3, which is mainly visible in X-rays. It is upstaged by its brighter and better-known neighbor, the Jellyfish Nebula (IC 443). The two star wrecks, both located in the constellation Gemini, appear to partially overlap as seen in X-rays. Recent X-ray evidence suggests that hot plasma likely associated with G189.6+3.3 may extend across the entire region, a hint that the overlap may be nearly total.

A massive star explodes when its energy-producing core runs out of fuel and collapses under its own weight, triggering an explosion that blows the star apart. The explosion’s shock wave encloses a hot cloud of debris that rapidly expands into space. So far, astronomers have cataloged about 300 supernova remnants in our galaxy.  

The Fermi mission is part of NASA’s fleet of observatories monitoring the changing cosmos to help humanity better understand how the universe works. More than a decade ago, observations from Fermi’s LAT (Large Area Telescope) showed that the shock waves of supernova remnants accelerated particles to within a fraction of the speed of light, a process first proposed by physicist Enrico Fermi — the mission’s namesake — in 1949.

These high-speed particles, called cosmic rays, interact with interstellar gas to produce gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light. Protons make up 99% of cosmic ray particles. To prove that accelerated protons are responsible for the glow, astronomers search for a specific gamma-ray feature. When cosmic-ray protons smash into interstellar gas, they produce a short-lived particle called a neutral pion, which almost immediately decays into a pair of gamma rays. This emission occurs within a specific band of energies associated with the neutral pion’s mass and lies within the range detected by Fermi’s LAT instrument.

In 2013, Fermi observations proved that the Jellyfish Nebula, which is interacting with part of a glowing cloud of hydrogen gas known as Sharpless 249, produced gamma rays through this mechanism. Its neighbor, G189.6+3.3, was discovered in 1994 as part of an X-ray survey by the German-led ROSAT (Roentgen Satellite) mission.

A bright filament of gas lies between the overlapping remnants. New observations of this feature reveal that the shock wave from G189.6+3.3 slammed into dense interstellar gas there and dramatically slowed, key evidence that both remnants are interacting with the same cloud system.

Astronomers think the Jellyfish Nebula is also a candidate PeVatron, a cosmic particle accelerator capable of boosting protons to energies so high they could nearly escape our galaxy. Such particles can produce gamma rays with trillions of times more energy than visible light. Finding a second particle accelerator near the Jellyfish Nebula could offer scientists new clues for how supernova remnants develop into PeVatrons.

“The overlapping remnants, a connecting gas filament, and the availability of data from Fermi and other facilities motivated us to delve into this complex but little-studied region,” said co-author Marianne Lemoine-Goumard, an astrophysicist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) based at the University of Bordeaux. “With Fermi’s LAT instrument, we found gamma-ray emission associated with accelerated protons in the northern part of the fainter remnant. If both remnants are interacting with the same structure, then they must share a common distance from us.”

The team concludes the remnants lie about 6,000 light-years away, their explosion centers are separated by roughly 40 light-years projected onto the plane of the sky, and the original stars may have been 20 or more times the Sun’s mass.

Estimates of the remnants’ ages vary widely, but the team concludes that the age of the Jellyfish Nebula is 8,000 to 9,000 years, while G189.6+3.3 is between 20,000 to 110,000 years old. This means the delay between the explosions could have extended for up to 100,000 years.

In addition, the team conducted computer simulations of a million massive binary systems. They show that systems where the stars orbit close enough to exchange matter and interact during their lives can readily produce dual supernova explosions with similar separations and time delays as those found for the remnants. The team also estimated that the chance of randomly encountering this combination of observed spatial alignment and compatible distances to be less than 1%, strongly supporting a physical association.

“The evidence we’ve compiled — including observations across the spectrum, the chemical and physical properties of the remnants, simulations, and more — paints a compelling picture of a dual supernova event,” said Michailidis.

This study identifies a unique possible example of a binary system where both stars exploded as supernovae and left behind separate, detectable supernova remnants. Astronomers think that most massive stars form in binary or multiple-star systems. The Jellyfish Nebula/G189.6+3.3 complex offers astronomers a rare opportunity to study how massive binary stars evolve, exchange matter, explode, and experience velocity changes — called kicks — induced by the supernova blast. It also provides a powerful new laboratory for understanding how coupled supernova remnants behave, including how they accelerate particles, generate gamma rays, and shape their surrounding environments.

“Fermi’s gamma-ray observations of supernova remnants continue to reveal the dynamic lives of stars,” said Elizabeth Hays, the Fermi project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We can now connect the glowing remains of two massive stars to a powerful pair that evolved together over thousands of years.”

By Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Percy has now traveled more than 26.2 miles on the Red Planet! Could you?

A new study suggests that the collapse of a massive star could spark the creation of a tiny expanding universe rather than a black hole. The resulting object, called a gravastar, would avoid the singularity and event horizon that make black holes so puzzling. Massive stars produce light and heat through nuclear fusion in their [...]

New Webb and Hubble data not only confirm the existence of two distinct populations of stars in the ancient stellar system Terzan 5, once classified as a globular cluster, but also provides evidence for two more recent rounds of star formation.

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The remnants of a star that exploded 1,700 years ago

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Astronomers have discovered chemical differences between binary stars that indicate one has devoured at least one planet.