Six from the hundreds of ‘oddities’ revealed within the archives of the Hubble telescope, including three peculiar galaxies and three items that are gravitationally lensed.(Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. O’Ryan, P. Gómez (European Space Agency), M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble))ShareShare by:
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An artificial intelligence (AI) instrument has brought to light more than 1,000 strange space objects inside the image repository of the Hubble Space Telescope, featuring some which are inexplicable through science.
Following a two-day search with the tool, researchers uncovered 1,300 unconventional objects, including chaotic galaxies combining, stars emitting gas, and even several objects that have not yet been categorised. Out of these, 800 had never been noticed previously, European Space Agency (ESA) officials expressed in a Jan. 27 announcement. The outcomes were disseminated Dec. 16, 2025, inside the publication Astronomy & Astrophysics.
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Space jellies and sky burgers
For the fresh investigation, ESA research associates David O’Ryan and Pablo Gómez created an AI instrument to scrutinize 100 million image portions originating from the Hubble Legacy Archive, which encompasses the telescope’s observations after its initiation in 1990. Every image contained merely several dozen pixels for each side, signifying a narrow portion of sky just a thousandth of a degree across.
“Observable archives from the Hubble Space Telescope now stretch across 35 years, supplying a wealth of data in which astrophysical anomalies may be detected,” O’Ryan penned in the report.
Alongside the “jellyfish galaxies” and space-based “hamburgers,” the search revealed a variety of different occurrences. “The majority of oddities constituted galaxies in the act of merging or connecting, which showcase odd shapes or trailing, extended flows of stars and gas,” according to the NASA statement. “Additional discoveries were gravitational lenses, where the gravitation of a frontward galaxy alters spacetime and refracts light originating from a background galaxy into arcs or circles.”
One of the new Hubble anomalies is a ‘collisional ring’ galaxy, formed when one galaxy smashes into the center of another.
The researchers’ AI instrument, named AnomalyMatch, identified these attributes subsequent to acquiring patterns originating from a training collection of data. Employing instruments similar to this accelerates the conventional means of identifying unusual objects within the sky, which often entails manual inspection or an opportune sighting.
“While expert astronomers excel at identifying unusual features, the sheer volume of Hubble data makes comprehensive manual review impractical,” NASA officials said in a statement. “Citizen science initiatives have helped expand the scope of data analysis, but even these efforts fall short when faced with archives as extensive as Hubble’s.”
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“This is a powerful demonstration of how AI can enhance the scientific return of archival datasets,” Gómez added. “The discovery of so many previously undocumented anomalies in Hubble data underscores the tool’s potential for future surveys.”
Supplementary datasets wherein AI might prove beneficial include those from the Euclid space telescope, which is examining billions of galaxies to construct the most extensive 3D representation of the cosmos ever, along with the forthcoming Nancy Grace Roman Telescope and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, that will seek out exoplanets and mobile entities throughout vast expanses of the celestial sphere. AI might support researchers in organizing through the “information flood” from these considerable surveys, potentially enabling quicker pickups of novel objects than ever previously, according to the NASA declaration.
Article Sources
O’Ryan, D., & Gómez, P. (2025). Identifying astrophysical anomalies in 99.6 million source cutouts from the Hubble legacy archive using AnomalyMatch. Astronomy and Astrophysics, 704, A227. https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202555512
TOPICSHubble Space Telescope
Elizabeth HowellLive Science Contributor
Elizabeth Howell was staff reporter at Space.com between 2022 and 2024 and a regular contributor to Live Science and Space.com between 2012 and 2022. Elizabeth’s reporting includes multiple exclusives with the White House, speaking several times with the International Space Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, flying parabolic, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. Her latest book, “Why Am I Taller?” (ECW Press, 2022) is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams.
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