The scientists, who publish their results in the Astrophysical Journal , are amazed at the discovery. "It's one of those things that makes you smile because it shouldn't exist or, rather, you didn't expect it to exist," explained Alsiter Graham, one of the authors of the research.
The strange shape of the new galaxy could be due to the fact that it was caused by the collision of two spiral galaxies. "The stars that already existed in them would be distributed in the larger orbits creating that emerald-cut diamond shape", points out Duncan Forbes, co-author of the study, "while the gas would be concentrated in the median plane and there it would condense to form our stars and the disk that we observe ".
The dwarf galaxy was detected with the Japanese Subaru telescope, and later astronomers confirmed that Leda 074886 was actually rectangular when viewed with the giant Keck telescope, both located at the Mauna Kea Observatory (Hawaii).
