The Hubble telescope has captured pictures of the dwarf irregular galaxy Holmberg II blowing huge bubbles of glowing gas.
The bubbles are the lingering remnants of a star formation.
Many of the smaller galaxies, such as Holmberg II, have strange shapes that are hard to identify. Unlike larger galaxies, Holmberg II doesn't have the familiar spiral arms of galaxies like the Milky Way or the dense centre of an elliptical galaxy.
Nasa says that the intricate patterns were created by stars at the end of their lifecycles.
At the end of a star's life it explodes as a supernova. Shock waves then rip through less dense regions, blowing out and heating the gas, forming the delicate shells pictured here.
Can't get enough of strangely-shaped galaxies? Check out Halton Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, 400 pages of weird, beautiful and hard to classify galaxies.
See more gorgeous Hubble photos on Huffington Post.
