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The combination of irregular galaxies
Figure 1: Robert four-star combination

Astronomers pay attention to the beautiful and mysterious irregular galaxy combination.

"Robert Four-Star Combination" is a family of four galaxies with different rules, with a distance of about 65.438+0.6 billion light years, located near the center of Phoenix. Members are NGC87, NGC88, NGC89 and NGC92, which were discovered by JohnHerschel around 1830.

The differences between these galaxies are obvious. NGC87 (upper right) is an irregular galaxy, similar to the Magellanic Cloud near the Milky Way. NGC88 (middle) is a spiral galaxy with outward diffusion, which is probably composed of gas. NGC89 (at the bottom of the picture) is a spiral galaxy with two branches. The largest NGC92 in this group (on the left) is a rare s a spiral galaxy. One of its branches, about100000 light years away, has been deformed and has a lot of dust.

Figure 2: NGC 92

This four-star combination is one of the most beautiful small groups formed by galaxies in space. A combination of four to eight galaxies will be formed in some very small areas, which will enable researchers to better observe the interaction between galaxies, especially the formation of stars.

Astronomers have observed the characteristics of active star-forming regions of the members of Robert's four-star combination. They found that there are more than 200 similar regions in NGC92 galaxy. At the same time, they also observed that there are 56 similar regions in NGC87, while the other two galaxies seem to be fewer. At the same time, astronomers also observed the important star activity ring in NGC89 galaxy. This combination shows the motive force of star formation, which is probably the result of interaction between members.

The visible magnitude of this combination is 13, which is about 600 times weaker than the weakest sky visible to the naked eye. The magnitude of the brightest member in this combination is about 14.