Galaxy is a 'Frankenstein'

A seemingly nondescript galaxy is actually a behemoth cobbled together out of various cosmic spare parts, Frankenstein-style, a new study suggests. UGC 1382, which lies about 250 million light-years from Earth, had long been regarded as an old, small and ordinary elliptical galaxy. But new observations show that it's actually a spiral, 718,000 light-years wide -- seven times larger than Earth's own Milky Way. "The center of UGC 1382 is actually younger than the spiral disk surrounding it," study co-author Mark Seibert, of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. This is like finding a tree whose inner growth rings are younger than the outer rings."