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Three galaxies stand out for very different reasons: Hoag’s Object has a blue ring around a red core, AM 0644-741 bears the imprint of a collision, and NGC 6505 appears to wear a ring made from light bent by gravity. These are strong examples of cosmic oddities, but not a defensible “top 10”: strangeness has no formal astronomical ranking, and the available evidence supports detailed profiles of these three rather than ten.
What makes a galaxy strange?
“Strangest” is a matter of editorial judgment, not an official astronomical category. A galaxy may look unusual because of its physical shape, its motion, a collision that has distorted it, or an optical pattern produced when gravity bends light from something farther away. Those are different phenomena, even when they all make striking images.
The examples below are selected for visual distinctiveness and the scientific questions or mechanisms they illustrate. Their order is not a measured ranking, and distances or sizes are not scores of strangeness.
Three galaxies with unusual appearances
1. Hoag’s Object: a blue ring around a red core
Hoag’s Object looks like a bright blue outer ring surrounding a round, much redder central ball of stars, separated by a gap that appears nearly black. NASA estimates that it spans about 100,000 light-years and lies about 600 million light-years away in the direction of Serpens. Those are approximate figures, not precision measurements. NASA’s Hubble Mission Team describes the object.
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Its appearance is clear; its origin is not. NASA says the formation of Hoag’s Object remains unknown. Possible explanations include a galaxy collision billions of years ago or the gravitational influence of a central bar that later disappeared. The possibilities should not be mistaken for a settled account of how the galaxy formed.
2. AM 0644-741: a ring shaped by a collision
AM 0644-741 offers a different explanation for a ring-shaped galaxy. NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day describes its blue ring as about 150,000 light-years in diameter and places it about 300 million light-years away toward Volans. In this account, a smaller galaxy passed through a larger one, compressing interstellar gas and dust and sending a wave of star formation outward. NASA’s APOD feature on AM 0644-741 presents the collision as the mechanism behind its ring.
That makes it a useful contrast with Hoag’s Object: NASA gives a collision-driven explanation for AM 0644-741’s ring, while Hoag’s Object’s formation remains unresolved.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3. NGC 6505: an Einstein ring made of bent light
NGC 6505 looks surrounded by a ring, but the ring is not a structure of stars orbiting the galaxy. It is an Einstein ring: light from a much more distant background galaxy has been bent by the gravity of the foreground galaxy and aligned into a ring-like pattern as seen from Earth.
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NASA reports that Euclid detected the ring around the elliptical foreground galaxy NGC 6505, about 590 million light-years away. The background source is about 4.42 billion light-years away and had not previously been observed; NASA’s report said it did not yet have a name. NASA’s report on Euclid’s Einstein ring explains the alignment. Euclid Archive Scientist Bruno Altieri recalled spotting a hint in early testing images: “Even from that first observation, I could see it, but after Euclid made more observations of the area, we could see a perfect Einstein ring,” he said.
How these oddities fit into the wider galaxy population
Unusual shapes and interactions are not limited to these named examples. NASA’s Hubble overview notes that Hubble has observed galaxies that spin backwards, galaxies interacting before merging, and ring-shaped galaxies that may result from gravitational encounters with nearby or passing galaxies. Its Hubble Ultra Deep Field contains over 10,000 galaxies in a small patch of sky. NASA’s Hubble galaxy overview provides that broader context, rather than detailed profiles for a ranked list.
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NASA also explains that irregular galaxies can take unusual forms, including toothpick-like and ring-like shapes, and that interactions can distort or reshape galaxies. Active galaxies are another kind of unusual-looking object: activity around a central supermassive black hole can power a bright center, with surrounding gas and dust structures and sometimes jets. But “active” describes activity, not one particular shape; active galaxies can be spiral, elliptical, or irregular. NASA’s guide to galaxy types distinguishes these categories.
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Why a top-ten list would overstate what is known
A ten-item ranking would imply both a consistent definition of “strange” and enough evidence to compare ten named objects on common terms. There is no authoritative ranking or standardized measure of strangeness here, and the NASA sources above provide the strongest individual histories for three examples. Adding seven less-supported entries would make the list longer without making it more reliable.
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The three examples instead show why a galaxy’s appearance needs interpretation: a ring can be part of a galaxy’s structure, result from a collision-driven wave of star formation, or be an image of a distant galaxy distorted by gravity. A compelling picture alone does not determine which explanation applies—or, as with Hoag’s Object, settle the object’s origin.
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