Most galaxies are spiral, spherical or ellipsoidal aggregations of stars, but some have irregular configurations. These unusual objects may very well be galaxies in an early stage of evolution ...

"This collision helped give NGC 4694 its peculiar shape and ... NASA said: "Some galaxies, like NGC 4694, aren’t as easy to categorize as one type or the other. It takes a bit more digging ...

Astronomers believe it involved a runaway process called "inflation," in which a peculiar type of energy that existed ... after the big bang many smaller galaxies merged into larger ones, forming ...