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Credit & Copyright: X-ray: G.Trinchieri
(INAF-Brera) et al.,
CXC,
NASA
Optical: Palomar Digital Sky Survey
Explanation:
Stephan's
Quintet is a picturesque but clearly troubled
grouping of galaxies about 300 million light-years away
toward the high-flying constellation
Pegasus.
Spanning over 200,000 light-years at that distance,
this
composite false-color image
illustrates the powerful nature of this
multiple
galaxy collision,
showing x-ray data from the
Chandra
Observatory in blue superposed on optical data in yellow.
The x-rays
from the central blue cloud running vertically
through the image are produced by
gas heated to millions of degrees by an energetic
shock on a cosmic scale.
The shock was likely the result of the interstellar gas
in the large spiral galaxy, seen immediately to the right
of the cloud,
colliding with the quintet's tenuous intergalactic gas
as this galaxy plunged through group's central regions.
In fact, over billions of years, repeated passages of the
group galaxies through the hot intergalactic
gas should progressively strip them of their own star
forming material.
In this view, the large spiral galaxy just seen peeking
above the bottom edge is an unrelated foreground galaxy
a mere 35 million light-years distant.
Optical: Palomar Digital Sky Survey
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A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: Stephan's Quintet - interacting galaxies
Publications with words: Stephan's Quintet - interacting galaxies
See also: