Stephan’s Quintet (Hickson Compact Group 92) – Hubble Space Telescope Image
Stephan’s Quintet (Hickson Compact Group 92) – Hubble Space Telescope Image
Stephan’s Quintet—catalogued as Hickson Compact Group 92—fills this Hubble Space Telescope view with a striking assembly of galaxies against the blackness of Pegasus. Bright orange centres anchor the composition, while cooler blue, pink and white details gather around them in knots, bands and diffuse outer light. The result is both spacious and intensely concentrated: immense dark intervals separate forms that appear richly textured at their edges.
The group lies approximately 300 million light years from Earth. That distance lends particular force to the image’s fine detail. Compact points of light, softly glowing haloes and slender shadowed lanes remain distinct, even as the galaxies occupy only isolated portions of the broad, dark field.
Rather than forming a neat arrangement, the principal galaxies are distributed unevenly across the frame. Their varied brightness and apparent scale create a strong impression of depth: some emerge as sharply luminous structures, while others recede into quieter, more diffuse light.
A closer look
In the upper right, a galaxy curls around an intense orange centre. Its outer glow softens into a broad halo, touched with red and interrupted by small, concentrated points of light. Across the frame to the upper left, cooler colour takes over: blue light is broken into intricate patches, with pink and white knots embedded among darker regions.
Lower in the composition, a larger form spreads out from a brilliant core into smooth orange and beige bands. Along one edge, a dark lane cuts firmly across the surrounding glow, giving the galaxy an almost layered appearance. Bright and shadowed areas intermingle farther out, so that its boundaries seem to dissolve gradually into space rather than end abruptly.
The black field is not empty. Fine pinpoints appear throughout, with some barely visible until the darker portions of the image are examined closely. Near the lower edge, a faint streak subtly crosses the background. These restrained details temper the brilliance of the main galaxies and give the expansive negative space its own visual texture.
Image details and provenance
- Subject: Hickson Compact Group 92, Stephan’s Quintet
- Object type: Galaxy grouping / cluster
- Constellation: Pegasus
- Distance from Earth: 300 million light years
- Telescope: Hubble Space Telescope
- Original release date: 9 September 2009, 17:00
- Image credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team
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