Stephan’s Quintet Collision Observed in Unprecedented Detail

A galaxy traveling at 3.2 million km/h creates a massive shockwave, providing new insights into galactic dynamics and star formation.

Astronomers using the WEAVE spectrograph observed a galaxy, NGC 7318b, colliding with others in Stephan’s Quintet at speeds of 3.2 million km/h (2 million mph).
The collision generates a powerful shockwave, likened to a sonic boom, which ionizes gas and triggers star formation in certain regions.
The WEAVE instrument, combined with data from the James Webb Space Telescope, LOFAR, and the Very Large Array, revealed the shockwave’s dual nature, behaving differently in cold and hot gas regions.
This event offers a unique opportunity to study the chaotic interactions of galaxies, their evolution, and parallels to the Milky Way’s past and future galactic mergers.
The study marks the first scientific results from the WEAVE spectrograph, a state-of-the-art tool designed to transform our understanding of galaxy formation and dynamics.