Close-up view of Stephan's Quintet, a group of five galaxies. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) image showcases three regions of star birth: Long, sweeping tail and spiral arms of NGC 7319 (near center), the gaseous debris of galaxies NGC 7318B and NGC 7318A (top right) and the area north of those galaxies, the northern starburst region (top left). NGC 7317 is visible in the lower right. The bluish coloring of the quintet suggests they are relatively young with ages spanning from about 2 million to more than 1 billion years old. The quintet is in the constellation Pegasus, 270 million light years from Earth. First spied by Edouard M. Stephan in 1877, Stephan's Quintet is the first compact group ever discovered. This mosaic image was taken by HST's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) on December 30, 1998 and June 17, 1999.
