This
Astrobin Debut Object is a small but dramatic face-on spiral galaxy located 270 million light years away in the constellation of Aquila at a declination of -2 degrees. It is a magnitude 14 galaxy which spans 1.8 arc-minutes in our apparent view. This corresponds to a Milky Way size like diameter of 130,000 light years.
The arm structure here is a bit crazy. It starts off like a grand design spiral galaxy, with 2 strong arms eminating from a nicely barred core. But things quickly go awry from there. Although each arm extends out for 360 degrees, they do so in much different ways.
One arm extends down and then left, looping around the core. As it reached 270 degrees of rotation on the right side, it splits into 2 arms. Both of them extend down a bit further and then, incredibly, both appear to curl back into the beginning of the opposite arm. Bright blue star clouds are seen in different places in the outer disk.
Something has disturbed this galaxy structure in the past. One of the remaining bright spots in the disk could be an absorbed companion, but it is impossible to know for sure.
This galaxy shows a lot of detail for one which is almost 0.3 billion light years away from us.
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