Ancient 'ring of fire' galaxy found glaring at Earth across space and time

Eleven billion years ago, a hot, active, galaxy that looked like an eye glared across space. Now, using data from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have captured a snapshot of its unblinking gaze.

This galaxy, R5519, is made up of a flat ring of stars, with a hole in the middle where astronomers believe another blob of stars punched through. Galaxies like this, known as "collisional ring galaxies," turn up infrequently in the modern universe.

But this is the first time astronomers have seen one so old and far away; at 11 billion light-years from our planet, its ancient light is only just reaching Earth.

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(Image: James Josephides, Swinburne Astronomy Productions)

An animation illustrates the process that might have formed the hole at the galaxy's center.

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'Ring of Fire' galaxy R5519 has a massive hole that was created by a galaxy colliding with it.

The ring is making stars at a rate 50 times greater than the Milky Way

Auriga's Wheel is a newly uncovered collisional ring galaxy in the constellation of Auriga, the Chariot.

Astronomers have used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to discover a ring of X-ray power. This ring sounds like it might belong in Tolkien's Middle Earth, but it is, in fact, found in a galaxy about 300 million light years from Earth.

The galaxy called AM 0644-741 is what astronomers refer to as a "ring" galaxy. Taking a look at the image quickly reveals why. Astronomers think ring galaxies are formed when one galaxy smashes into another in a catastrophic collision.

The impact generates ripples in the interstellar gas of the targeted galaxy. These ripples, in turn, trigger new waves of star formation as gas expands outward from the site of the collision.