 |
 |
Seyfert's Sextet is a group of six galaxies some 90 million light years distant toward the constellation Serpens. Four of the galaxies form an interacting ensemble, in which strong gravitational forces are at work pulling plumes of stars, gas, and dust from the galaxies. Several of the four show the tell-tale distortions indicative of galaxy collisions, and the galaxies may eventually coalesce to form a single galaxy. Another of the galaxies (the nearly face-on spiral galaxy near the center of the image) is a fortuitously aligned background galaxy, roughly five times more distant than the other four. The sixth "galaxy" is actually not a galaxy at all but rather a tail of debris torn out of one of the others as a consequence of the interaction between the galaxies. This unusual ensemble of galaxies was discovered by the astronomer Carl Seyfer in the late 1940s.
Image and text copyright © Astrographics. All rights reserved. Image courtesy of Space Telescope Science Institute. |
|
|
|
