Astrophysical Anomalies | Hubble Space Telescope Image Archive
Six previously-undiscovered, strange, and fascinating astrophysical objects are displayed in this new image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope. These were discovered by researchers from the European Space Agency using new artificial intelligence (AI) methods. The AI tool allowed them to search nearly 100 million image cutouts and uncover anomalous objects including gravitational lenses, jellyfish galaxies with gaseous ‘tentacles’, merging and interacting galaxies, galaxies featuring rings and arcs and more.
This collection features six galaxies, showing a cross-section of the discoveries with examples of the more striking examples: three lenses with arcs distorted by gravity, one galactic merger, one ring galaxy, and one galaxy—not alone in the results—that defied classification.
To detect anomalous objects like these six, the researchers developed an AI tool capable of searching and recognizing patterns in images, and trained it with examples of types of unusual objects that they wanted to find. They then used their algorithm to examine the entire set of data from Hubble’s archive in search of further anomalous objects, over the course of just a couple of days. The result was a ranking of images containing objects most likely to be considered anomalous.
After inspecting the results from their AI tool, the team confirmed almost 1400 anomalies, of which over 800 were previously unknown. With even larger datasets on the way from missions, including European Space Agency's Euclid, the hope is that AI tools, such as this one, can help astronomers to make the absolute most of their observations.
Image Description: A collage of six images, showing examples of “anomalous” astrophysical objects. These are galaxies with unusual shapes, among them a ring-shaped galaxy, a bipolar galaxy, a group of merging galaxies, and three galaxies with warped arcs created by gravitational lensing.
Release Date: Jan. 27, 2026
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