Hubble Captures Bizarre Spiral Galaxy Spinning In Two Directions At Once
Within the Virgo Cluster, lies NGC 4698, a spiral galaxy roughly 55 million light-years away whose inner workings defy the expected order of things. Newly released images from the Hubble Space Telescope reveal a galaxy that is spinning in two entirely different directions at once. The culprit is believed to have been caused by something outside the galaxy.
While typical spiral galaxies act like uniformly rotating disks of stars, dust, and gas, NGC 4698 features a core that moves out of sync with the surrounding galactic body. The outer stellar ring rotates in a flat, predictable plane similar to our own Milky Way, but the densely packed cluster of stars at its core is tilted perpendicularly, spinning crosswise like a wheel set on its edge inside a flat ring. Because galactic structures are not rigidly bound, individual stellar streams can follow separate orbital loops around a common center without...
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