When the merger is complete, HXMM01 will rapidly evolve to become a giant elliptical galaxy with a mass about four times that of the Milky Way.

[4] A team at the University of California, Irvine, led by Asantha Cooray, was the first to detect and characterize HXMM01 in data from the Herschel space telescope's HerMES instrument.

Analyses of the data, published in May 2013,[1][2] revealed the galaxy to be a merging pair with a mass at least ten times that of the Milky Way.

[2][3] With a mass at least 10 times that of the Milky Way,[1] HXMM01 is located at a redshift of 2.307 (corresponding to a distance of about 11 billion light years under the Λ-CDM model of cosmology)[3] and has various physical features that are not characteristic of SMGs.

[2] By analyzing HXMM01's rapid rate of star formation, the discovery team was able to deduce that giant elliptical galaxies would be able to form in the Universe at a redshift of about 1.5,[2] corresponding to a distance (and thus observed galactic age) of about 4 billion years.