NASA’s Hubble Spots an Out-of-Sync Galaxy

First reported Fri, 18 Sep 2026 13:38:12 GMT · Last updated Sat, 19 Sep 2026 13:23:57 GMT

3 min read NASA’s Hubble Spots an Out-of-Sync Galaxy The spiral galaxy NGC 4698 shines in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker, the MAUVE-HST Team Though the spiral galaxy in this new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope seems serene, it hides a chaotic secret. This galaxy is NGC 4698, and it lies about 55 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. It’s one of over a thousand galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, the nearest large cluster of galaxies bound together by gravity. As a spiral galaxy similar to our own Milky Way galaxy, NGC 4698 has spiral arms that curl around within a thin disk of stars, gas, and dust. These arms are marked by opaque clumps of brown dust and dotted with small collections of bright blue stars. Unlike many other spiral galaxies, like this one recently photographed by Hubble , NGC 4698’s delicate spiral arms are only prominent in the outer reaches of the disk; spiral arms often wind down to the very center of a galaxy, but NGC 4698’s spiral arms appear to shy away from its glowing center. The arms instead hover in a ring-like structure around the perimeter of the galaxy. NGC 4698’s center is domi