With the help of citizen scientists, a team of astronomers has discovered a very rare type of galaxy that may yield valuable insights on how galaxies developed during the early days of the universe.
The galaxy, named J1649+2635, is nearly 800 million light-years from Earth.
It is a spiral galaxy, like our own Milky Way, but with prominent "jets" of subatomic particles propelled outward from its core at nearly the speed of light.
Spiral galaxies are not supposed to have such large jets.
"The conventional wisdom is that such jets come only from elliptical galaxies that form through the merger of spirals. We do not know how spirals can have these large jets," said Minnie Mao from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in the US.
J1649+2635 is only the fourth jet-emitting spiral galaxy discovered so far.
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The astronomers took help from volunteers who are part of an online project called the Galaxy Zoo.
The members classify the galaxies as spiral, elliptical, or other types.
Each galaxy image is inspected by multiple volunteers to ensure accuracy in the classification.
So far, more than 150,000 Galaxy Zoo participants have classified some 700,000 galaxies.