Glowing in the Pegasus constellation are five apparently closely packed galaxies known as Stephan's Quintet, whispering the secrets of galactic evolution to scientists.
The cloud is a particularly surprising find because astronomers would have expected ultraviolet light to change the nature of the hydrogen in the cloud. Ultraviolet light ionizes the atoms in an atomic gas cloud will ionize, meaning they will gain or lose electrons and end up charged. But the gas observed in Stephan's Quintet is not ionized.
The lack of ionization suggests that the gas could be left over from galactic formation. Far away from any stars, diffuse clouds of atomic hydrogen still exist on their own, which could make a case for them being by-products of interactions that formed a galaxy. It is also possible that the cloud surrounding Stephan's Quintet could have been released by an ancient crash between two of the galaxies.
Although the explanation for the unionized gas still remains unknown, an answer could change what we think we know about how galaxies are born and continue to evolve.
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