Chandra Release - July 9, 2009

Visual Description: Stephan's Quintet

The image features a group of galaxies known as Stephan's Quintet.  The dominant colors in the image are shades of pale blue, gold and black.  The structure of Stephan's Quintet consists of five galaxies arranged in a clump with another off to the lower right, with each galaxy having different shapes and sizes and most in the gold coloring.   In the bottom center of the image, there is one spiral galaxy that stands out from the rest of the group due to its larger size and colorful blue and pink appearance.  A curved, light blue ridge runs down the center of the image between some of the galaxies. It shows X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The optical data in gold, blue and pink are from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. The blue-pink spiral that stands out is not part of the group, but a prominent foreground galaxy (NGC 7320). The galaxy just off the center right, NGC 7318b, is passing through the core of other galaxies at almost 2 million miles per hour, and is thought to be causing the ridge of X-ray emission by generating a shock wave that heats the gas.