As part of a research team studying galaxies, two University of Maryland scientists recently helped find a wild one.

It doesn't fit into the two main galaxy shape categories and is even a bit too odd to belong with those astronomers call "irregulars," although loosely speaking it is. It appears in one respect a conventional spiral galaxy, but also in a class by itself, a cosmic eccentric dropping clues about galaxies and the mysterious objects believed to lie at the center of most of them: supermassive black holes.

University of Maryland astronomy professor Sylvain Veilleux and doctoral student Vicki Toy have been trailing this galaxy along with 11 researchers from other institutions, and in a recent development in the field help from amateur astronomers through such websites as Galaxy Zoo. Their research report appeared online last month and is scheduled to be in print next month in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Couched in the customary clusters of mathematical equations and graphs, the research report begins telling the story of a galaxy that like nearly all of the 700,000 galaxies loosely classified so far, a fraction of the total in the universe is identified only by catalog number: J1649+2635.

It's about 800 million light years from Earth, which in astronomical terms is in the neighborhood, and about the size of our own galaxy, the Milky Way: roughly 80,000 light years across. For some sense of scale, consider that one light year the distance light travels in a vacuum in 365 days is nearly 6 trillion miles. That's about 100 million trips from Baltimore to California and back again.

J1649+2635 is a "grand design spiral," meaning it shows well-defined spiral arms emanating in unbroken lengths from the center. In that respect it resembles the Milky Way, also a spiral, and conforms to one of the main established galaxy types.

Other features, however, set it apart, challenging some standing notions about galaxies. The anomalies are yet to be explained.

It has two elongated structures shooting out of it: jets or plumes of subatomic particles mostly likely electrons and protons that are emitting non-visible radio energy.

That's odd, as such jets are usually found in elliptical galaxies, which contain stars that are older than those found in spirals. This is only the fourth spiral galaxy found so far to emit these jets. It is also the first "grand design" galaxy to show a "halo" of visible light around it, probably the glow of a vast cloud of stars.

The researchers got onto J1649+2635 by following up information compiled on the Galaxy Zoo website, which allows anyone to look at images of galaxies and sort them into categories.

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Maryland scientists in team studying oddball galaxy