The close proximity of Stephan’s Quintet gives astronomers a ringside seat to galactic mergers and interactions.

NASAs Webb Space Telescope Sheds Light on Galaxy Evolution and Black Holes

NASA’s Webb Space, The close proximity of Stephan’s Quintet gives astronomers a ringside seat to galactic mergers and interactions. Webb shows never-before-seen details in this galaxy group thanks to its powerful, infrared vision and extremely high spatial resolution. Sparkling clusters of millions of young stars and starburst regions of fresh star birth grace the image. Sweeping tails of gas, dust, and stars are being pulled from several of the galaxies due to gravitational interactions. Most dramatically, the Webb Space Telescope captures huge shock waves as one of the galaxies, NGC 7318B, smashes through the cluster. Together, the five galaxies of Stephan’s Quintet are also known as the Hickson Compact Group 92 (HCG 92). Although called a “quintet,” only four of the galaxies are actually close together and caught up in a cosmic dance. The fifth and leftmost galaxy, called NGC 7320, is well in the foreground compared with the other four. In fact, NGC 7320 resides just 40 million light-years from Earth, while the other four galaxies (NGC 7317, NGC 7318A, NGC 7318B, and NGC 7319) are around 290 million light-years away.

NASA’s Webb Space, This is still fairly close in cosmic terms, compared with more distant galaxies billions of light-years away. Studying such relatively nearby galaxies like these helps astronomers better understand structures seen in a much more distant universe. This proximity provides scientists a ringside seat for witnessing the merging and interactions between galaxies that are so crucial to all of galaxy evolution. Rarely do astronomers witness 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 an excellent “laboratory” for studying these processes fundamental to all galaxies.Tight groups like this may have been more common in the early universe when their superheated, infalling material may have fueled very energetic black holes called quasars. Even today, the topmost galaxy in the group – NGC 7319 – harbors an active galactic nucleus, a supermassive black hole that is about 24 million times the mass of the Sun. It is actively pulling in material and puts out light energy equivalent to 40 billion Suns.

Source: This news is originally published by scitechdaily

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