This galaxy, seen here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, has a far more exciting and futuristic classification than most — it is a ‘megamaser’. Megamasers are intensely bright, around 100 million times brighter than the masers found in galaxies like our Milky Way. The entire galaxy acts as an astronomical laser that beams out microwave emission rather than visible light (hence the ‘m’ replacing the ‘l’). See http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1652a/
