Galactic grouping

This quartet of galaxies is located approximately 270 million light years away in the Sagittarius constellation. The four galaxies – three in a line and one beneath, forming a triangle shape – together make up HCG 86.

HCG stands for Hickson Compact Group, and is used to classify groups of four to ten galaxies which lie very close to each other. It’s within these HCGs that interactions such as galactic mergers can sometimes be observed. In this image the two bright objects to the right of the elongated galaxy are not part of the quartet.