"Stephan's Quintet", Grouping Of 5 Galaxies, Features In This NASA Image

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope today revealed never-before-seen details of galaxy group called "Stephan's Quintet". The image shows in rare vivid detail how interacting galaxies trigger star formation in each other and how gas in galaxies is being disturbed, NASA said.

According to their website, the galaxy group image is the Webb telescope's largest image to date covering about one-fifth of the Moon's diameter. The image contains over 150 million pixels and has been constructed from 1,000 separate image files.

Take Five: Captured in exquisite detail, @NASAWebb peered through the thick dust of Stephan's Quintet, a galaxy cluster showing huge shockwaves and tidal tails. This is a front-row seat to galactic evolution: https://t.co/63zxpNDi4I #UnfoldTheUniverse pic.twitter.com/em9wSJPkEU

— NASA (@NASA) July 12, 2022

The information from Webb telescope provides new insights into how galactic interactions may have driven galaxy evolution in the early universe.

The image captures sweeping tails of gas, dust and stars that are being pulled from several of the galaxies due to gravitational interactions and most dramatically, James Webb Space Telescope captures huge shock waves as one of the galaxies, NGC 7318B, smashes through the cluster.

The data from Webb will provide valuable, new information which will, for instance, help scientists understand the rate at which supermassive black holes feed and grow. 

This proximity allows astronomers to witness the merging and interactions between galaxies that are so crucial to all of galaxy evolution. 

NASA says that it is rare for 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's Quintet is a fantastic "laboratory" for studying these processes fundamental to all galaxies.