Indian team spots rare ‘bow and arrow’ radio galaxy 2 billion light years away

Guwahati: Twelve Indian researchers working across three countries have discovered a rare radio galaxy shaped like a bow and arrow, located about 2 billion light years from Earth.

The galaxy, named RAD-BAARG, spans 1.8 million light years across. A light year equals about 5.88 trillion miles.

Radio galaxies are a type of active galaxy powered by supermassive black holes at their cores, emitting huge amounts of energy as radio waves. Researchers said RAD-BAARG may be one of the clearest known radio signatures of a giant bow shock — formed when a galaxy falls supersonically into a cluster environment.

The 144 MHz radio image was captured by the LOFAR radio telescope and overlaid with optical data from the BASS survey. The findings are detailed in a paper by Hota et al. (2026) and the RAD@home Collaboratory.

The discovery adds to understanding of how galaxies interact with their environments and how massive bow shocks form in the cosmos.