SANTIAGO, Chile, Feb. 2 (UPI) -- Astronomers in Chile say they have captured an image of a distant galaxy with an uncommon flat, pancake-like shape without the normal central bulge.
The bright galaxy, called NGC 3621 and located about 22 million light years from Earth, appears at first glance to be a good example of a classical spiral galaxy, SPACE.com reported Wednesday.
The absence of the familiar central bulge makes it what astronomers call a "pure-disk galaxy," indicating it has yet to experience a merging or collision with another galaxy that would disturb the disk and create the common central bulge.
Most astronomers believe galaxies grow by merging with other galaxies, but recent research suggests pure-disk galaxies may be fairly common.
NGC 3621's relative proximity allows astronomers at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile an opportunity to study a wide range of astronomical objects within it -- including stellar nurseries, dust clouds and pulsating stars called Cepheid variables, which astronomers use as distance markers in the universe.
