Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day (sponsored by NASA, see http://apod.nasa.gov/) held a bit of a surprise: the ever photogenic galaxy group Stephan’s Quintet imaged by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) onboard the Hubble Space Telescope. The Quintet is part of the research of UWO professor Dr. Sarah Gallagher and her graduate students Konstantin Fedotov, who uses Hubble to study the star cluster population in the galaxy group, and Tyler Desjardins (that is to say myself), who uses X-ray observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to examine hot gas in a sample of galaxy groups including the Quintet.

Pictured: Stephan’s Quintet (Hubble Legacy Archive; NASA; ESA; Al Kelly)