Hubble image reveals NGC 4698, a Virgo Cluster galaxy whose center spins the wrong way

A galaxy caught spinning the wrong way

On September 18, 2026, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope team released a new image of NGC 4698, a spiral galaxy about 55 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. At first glance it looks like a familiar portrait: a flat, starry disk with spiral arms, dust lanes, and a soft glowing center. But according to the astronomers behind the observation, NGC 4698 is one of only a few known spiral galaxies whose central bulge extends out of the disk at a right angle, and whose innermost stars and gas rotate perpendicular to the rest of the disk. In plain terms, the middle of this galaxy spins in a direction that is completely out of sync with everything around it.

That mismatch is not a photographic quirk. It is a structural clue, and it points to something astronomers think happens far more often than we notice: galaxies are still eating. This article explains what the Hubble image shows, how scientists read rotation and bulge orientation as evidence of a galaxy's past meals, and why a crowded environment like the Virgo Cluster makes such acquisitions common.

What the Hubble data actually show

The verified facts come from the NASA science article published September 18, 2026, by the NASA Hubble Mission Team at Goddard Space Flight Center. NGC 4698 lies about 55 million light-years away and belongs to the Virgo Cluster, the nearest large cluster of galaxies bound together by gravity, with more than a thousand members. As a spiral galaxy, it resembles our own Milky Way: spiral arms curl within a thin disk of stars, gas, and dust, marked by dark dust clumps and small groups of bright blue, massive young stars.

Several features stand out in the image and the accompanying description. The spiral arms are only prominent in the outer part of the disk; instead of winding down to the core as they do in many spiral galaxies, they form a ring-like structure around the perimeter. The center is dominated by an elongated galactic bulge, a diffuse off-white glow produced by stars that are smaller, older, and cooler than the blue stars in the outer disk. These tightly packed central stars orbit a supermassive black hole containing millions of times the Sun's mass, and scientists have found signs that this black hole is actively growing, drawing gas inward with its gravity.

The two anomalies that make NGC 4698 unusual are geometric. First, the elongated bulge extends out from the disk at a right angle, faintly visible in the image as a ghostly glow peeking above and below the dusty disk. Second, the stars and gas nearest the galaxy's center rotate perpendicular to the rest of the disk. NGC 4698 is one of only a few spiral galaxies known to show this arrangement.

The likely explanation, clearly labeled as an explanation

Here the article moves from observation to interpretation, and the distinction matters. The observed facts are the image itself, the elongated bulge, the rotation measurements, and the hydrogen tail described below. The explanation is a hypothesis, one that astronomers describe as likely but not proven. Per the NASA article, the culprit probably lies outside the galaxy: if NGC 4698 funneled in gas from an outside source, the newly collected gas could have formed a disk of gas and stars in the galaxy's center, tilted at an angle relative to the rest of the disk. Over time, that misaligned inner disk could settle into the perpendicular arrangement we see now.

Supporting evidence for an external origin comes from radio observations of hydrogen. Some observations suggest that this galaxy once experienced a minor galactic merger, evidenced by a short tail of hydrogen streaming from one side of the galaxy. Such a tail is the kind of disturbance expected when a smaller galaxy or a gas cloud is being pulled apart and absorbed. It is consistent with the accretion picture, though astronomers have not observed the merger itself; the tail is circumstantial evidence, not a recording of the event.

The takeaway for a non-specialist: no one has watched NGC 4698 swallow anything. What astronomers have is a set of present-day measurements that fit the accretion explanation better than any alternative they have proposed. That is how much of astronomy works, since galactic events unfold over hundreds of millions of years.

Why the Virgo Cluster matters

The image data come from an observing program focusing on galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, associated with the MAUVE-HST team led by D. Thilker, as stated in the image credit on both NASA pages. The program zooms in on details of these relatively nearby galaxies, such as individual star clusters and nebulae, while researchers also use the data to study the larger picture: how a galaxy's journey through a cluster affects its evolution and its ability to form new stars.

Environment is central to that question. In a cluster like Virgo, galaxies are packed far more densely than in quieter regions of the universe. Gravity constantly pulls at them: galaxies pass close to one another, small ones are tidally stretched by big ones, and clouds of gas drift between them. A galaxy moving through this crowd has many opportunities to capture outside material. That is why a cluster is a good place to look for galaxies caught mid-meal, and why NGC 4698's out-of-sync center is not an isolated oddity but a case study in how environment shapes galaxies.

What this means for the Milky Way

The processes that scrambled NGC 4698's center are the same ones growing our own galaxy. The Milky Way is surrounded by streams of stars and clouds of gas that are remnants of smaller galaxies it has absorbed over billions of years, and it continues to accrete gas today. Meanwhile, the supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy like NGC 4698 or the Milky Way grows primarily by consuming exactly the kind of infalling gas that accretion events deliver. In that sense, NGC 4698 is a preview of processes happening in our own galactic neighborhood, observed from 55 million light-years away. What Hubble shows us is not a finished object but a snapshot of a galaxy still under construction.

In the source's own words

"Though the spiral galaxy in this new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope seems serene, it hides a chaotic secret."

"What's more, the stars and gas nearest the galaxy's center rotate perpendicular to the rest of the disk!"

"Some observations suggest that this galaxy once experienced a minor galactic merger, as evidenced by a short 'tail' of hydrogen streaming from one side of the galaxy."

Attribution for the quotations

These quotations are from "NASA's Hubble Spots an Out-of-Sync Galaxy," published by the NASA Hubble Mission Team, Goddard Space Flight Center, on September 18, 2026, at science.nasa.gov. The wording is reproduced exactly as it appears on that page, with the original punctuation retained. A related NASA image article, "Hubble Spots Chaotic Secret in Galaxy," published by the NASA HQ Web Team on September 25, 2026, confirms the same facts and notes the image was released on September 18, 2026. As with any quotation, these lines prove what NASA said; the underlying scientific interpretation, the accretion and minor-merger scenario, is assessed separately in this article and should be understood as the astronomers' likely explanation rather than an established certainty.