Wow, how time do fly! Particularly when the event is on the other side of the 1.5 missing years of COVID.
Recently, 2025-07-12, APOD published another candidate for this rogue's gallery of galaxies: NGC 2685, the Helix Galaxy.
I can see this as a galaxy entering a tunnel, maybe a warp drive, to transport the entire galaxy elsewhere? Not sure what the outer rings are doing in this scenario - maybe a cradle to hold the tunnel?
APOD, of course, provides a more reasonable explanation, but note the words: "bizarre", "peculiar", "strange", "old and stable".
Explanation: What is going on with this galaxy? NGC 2685 is a confirmed polar ring galaxy - a rare type of galaxy with stars, gas and dust orbiting in rings perpendicular to the plane of a flat galactic disk. The bizarre configuration could be caused by the chance capture of material from another galaxy by a disk galaxy, with the captured debris strung out in a rotating ring. Still, observed properties of NGC 2685 suggest that the rotating helix structure is remarkably old and stable. In this sharp view of the peculiar system also known as Arp 336 or the Helix galaxy, the strange, perpendicular rings are easy to trace as they pass in front of the galactic disk, along with other disturbed outer structures. NGC 2685 is about 50,000 light-years across and 40 million light-years away in the constellation of the Great Bear (Ursa Major).
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