Cosmic Fender Bender
A pileup of galactic proportions is captured in this Hubble Space Telescope image. The wreckage is visible, from the distorted shapes of the galaxies to the trails of debris streaming away from the accident scene.
This is Stephan’s Quintet, also known as Hickson Compact Group 92. Okay, first things first: it’s not really a quintet. The galaxy on the upper left, NGC 7320, is actually a foreground galaxy located about 40 million light-years from Earth. The remaining four galaxies are over seven times farther away, at an estimated distance of 300 million light-years in the constellation Pegasus. This was the first compact group of galaxies discovered, seen by Edouard M. Stephan in 1877.
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