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Stephan's Quintet Dazzles In Incredible Infrared Image From JWST

The turbulent times of four interacting galaxies are laid bare in this spectacular observation.

Dr. Alfredo Carpineti

Senior Staff Writer & Space Correspondent

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Stephan's quintet Imag Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI — Stephan's quintet. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

Galaxies' interactions are a hotbed of star formation, an ideal target for an infrared telescope. Given that JWST is the most powerful there is, it would go amiss not to look at a galaxy merger. And there is no finer than Stephan's Quintet.

Four of the galaxies are interacting with two actively merging, and this fantastic new image rivals visible light observations in terms of detail. The galaxies are located 290 million light-years away and JWST can track the different chemical components across these galaxies.

Stephan's quintet. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

This is actually a mosaic and the largest JWST image to date. The full version contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files.

Find out more about this and the other historic images released today here.