The Bullseye galaxy earned its nickname thanks to its wild number of rings. A smaller galaxy shot through its heart 50 million years ago to help create a cosmic wonder.

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured this striking image of an unusual galaxy with a bullseye structure, as nine rings surround its central point. Technically known as LEDA 1313424, the galaxy has more rings than any other known galaxy, and studying it is helping astronomers to learn how galaxies like this are created.

Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have spotted a record-smashing galaxy wrapped in 9 rings of stars — along with the dwarf galaxy that violently plunged through its center.

The Bullseye is now confirmed to have nine rings, eight of which are visible to Hubble. Researchers confirmed the existence of the ninth ring by studying data from the W. M. Keck Observatory. That means the Bullseye has six more rings than any other known galaxy.

Imad Pasha, the lead researcher and a doctoral student at Yale University called it a "serendipitous discovery" because it has the most number of rings than any spiral galaxy found to date. While Hubble discovered eight rings of the galaxy, the ninth one was confirmed through observations using Hawaii-based Keck observatory.

There, astronomers have found a galaxy girdled by, not one, but nine concentric rings – the aftermath of a violent encounter with a blue dwarf galaxy that shot right through its heart, sending shockwaves rippling out into space.

A small blue dwarf galaxy passed through the massive Bullseye galaxy. This impact created nine rings of new stars.

In a study that was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, astronomers used Hubble to find eight observable rings—more than any other observatory has ever seen in any galaxy—and used data from Hawaii's W.