By California Institute of Innovation
August 25, 2022
Appleton and his coworkers have actually studied this unstable region for almost 20 years using other telescopes such as the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope, whose information archive is based at IPAC. Spitzer was handled by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) handles for NASA.
An enormous mosaic of Stephans Quintet is the largest image to date from NASAs James Webb Space Telescope, covering about one-fifth of the Moons size. The visual grouping of 5 galaxies was caught by Webbs Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).
Last month, NASA launched a batch of long-awaited, jaw-dropping images from its latest and most effective area observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). In extraordinary detail, pictures exposed far-off wonders such as the Carina Nebula, the Southern Ring Nebula, and Stephans Quintet– a collection of five amazing galaxies, a few of which are actively hitting each other.
In this video, Philip Appleton, a personnel scientist at Caltechs IPAC astronomy center, strolls us through the new image of the quintet. 4 of the five galaxies are gravitationally bound and comprise a compact galaxy group situated hundreds of millions of light-years away in the Pegasus constellation. At least three galaxies in this group are actively hitting each other, producing shock waves that set off brand-new star formation.