Surprising ring sheds light on galaxy formation

The question of what triggers the extremely rapid star formation within Hyper Luminous Infrared Galaxies (HyLIRGs), as yet unknown, is of much interest to guide our understanding of the formation and evolution of galaxies in the universe. A new photo released by the European Southern Observatory shows a HyLIRG 10,000 times brighter than our Milky Way (in infrared light)—the distant galaxy PJ0116-24—and was released in conjunction with a newly published paper in Nature Astronomy that sheds light on its formation.