{"id":11407,"date":"2022-07-13T00:18:18","date_gmt":"2022-07-12T16:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/stephans-quintet-five-galaxies-imaged-by-james-webb-space-telescope\/"},"modified":"2022-07-13T00:18:18","modified_gmt":"2022-07-12T16:18:18","slug":"stephans-quintet-five-galaxies-imaged-by-james-webb-space-telescope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/stephans-quintet-five-galaxies-imaged-by-james-webb-space-telescope\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephan\u2019s Quintet: Five galaxies imaged by James Webb Space Telescope"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Stephen\u2019s Quintet viewed by the James Webb Space Telescope. The leftmost galaxy, named NGC 7320, is located 40 million light-years from Earth. The other four galaxies (NGC 7317, NGC 7318A, NGC 7318B, and NGC 7319) are closer together and are located about 290 million light-years away. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The five galaxies of Stephan\u2019s Quintet, prominently featured at the beginning of the holiday film \u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful Life,\u201d were seen with new eyes by the James Webb Space Telescope.<\/p>\n

Located in the northern constellation Pegasus, Stephan\u2019s Quintet consists of four galaxies that are tightly bound \u2014 cosmically speaking \u2014 about 290 million light-years away. In a coincidence of cosmic alignment, a foreground galaxy lurks on the left of the image about 40 million light-years from Earth.<\/p>\n

See the full-resolution view of Stephan\u2019s Quintet.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith its powerful, infrared vision and extremely high spatial resolution, Webb shows never-before-seen details in this galaxy group,\u201d NASA said in a press release. \u201cSparkling clusters of millions of young stars and starburst regions of fresh star birth grace the image.<\/p>\n

\u201cSweeping tails of gas, dust and stars are being pulled from several of the galaxies due to gravitational interactions,\u201d NAS A said. \u201cMost dramatically, Webb captures huge shock waves as one of the galaxies, NGC 7318B, smashes through the cluster.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis proximity provides astronomers a ringside seat for witnessing the merging and interactions between galaxies that are so crucial to all of galaxy evolution,\u201d NASA said. \u201cRarely do scientists see in so much detail how interacting galaxies trigger star formation in each other, and how the gas in these galaxies is being disturbed. Stephan\u2019s Quintet is a fantastic \u2018laboratory\u2019 for studying these processes fundamental to all galaxies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two of the galaxies are in the process of merging.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a very important area to study because it shows the type of interactions that drive the evolution of galaxies,\u201d said Giovanna Giardino, a scientist working on the Near Infrared Spectrograph instrument on Webb. \u201cThat\u2019s the mechanism of galaxy growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis enormous mosaic is Webb\u2019s largest image to date, covering about one-fifth of the moon\u2019s diameter,\u201d NASA said. The image includes more than 150 million pixels and was constructed from nearly 1,000 separate image files.<\/p>\n

The mosaic combines data from Webb\u2019s U.S.-built Near Infrared Camera and the European Mid-Infrared Instrument, two of the observatory\u2019s four science instruments. NIRCam\u2019s high-resolution imaging capability allowed Webb to see individual stars and the bright core of the foreground galaxy on the left side of the image.<\/p>\n

The galaxy at the top of the image harbors a supermassive black hole \u2014 or an active galactic nucleus \u2014 pulling in matter to generate a shine as bright as 40 billion suns. Webb resolved the fast-moving hot gas near the supermassive black hole \u201cin a level of detail never seen before,\u201d NASA said.<\/p>\n

Like all of Webb\u2019s initial batch of images, the galaxies of Stephan\u2019s Quintet are backdropped by a tapestry of fainter galaxies in the more distant universe.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen\u2019s Quintet viewed by the James Webb Space Telescope. The leftmost galaxy, named NGC 7320, is located 40 million light-years from Earth. The other four galaxies (NGC 7317, NGC 7318A, NGC 7318B, and NGC 7319) are closer together and are located about 290 million light-years away. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI The five galaxies of Stephan\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11407"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}