Stephan's Quintet

compact galaxy group · four colliding galaxies (and one impostor)

290 million light-years from Earth

Four galaxies caught in a slow-motion pile-up 290 million light-years away. One of them is ramming through the group so fast it has lit a shock wave bigger than the Milky Way. The fifth galaxy is a foreground impostor.

• 290 million light-years · the shock front is about 100,000 light-years long
• the lone blue galaxy NGC 7320 is only 40 million light-years away

kind

galaxy · explosion or collision

catalogue

NGC 7318

drawn with it

NGC 7317 · NGC 7318A · NGC 7318B · NGC 7319 · NGC 7320