Robert’s Quartet is a group of four morphologically diverse galaxies location around 160 million light years away in the constellation of Phoenix.
It consists of NGC 87,88,89 and 92.
NGC 87 in the upper right is an irregular galaxy similar to the Magellanic Clouds while NGC 88 in the center is a spiral galaxy enveloped in diffuse gas which obscures detail.
NGC 89 at the bottom is a highly distorted spiral galaxy due to interaction with the other galaxies.
NGC 92 top left is a spiral galaxy and is the largest member of the group. The appearance is very distorted with a long stream of stars jetting out from the galaxy over a range of 100,000 light years.
There is a large amount of gas and stars bridging between all members of the group.
The group was named after Robert Freedman who produced many of the updated positions of galaxies in the Kerr, Arp and Madore Southern Peculiar Galaxies catalog.
Imaged in LRGB on my Planewave CDK 1000 at Observatorio El Sauce, Chile.
Image acquisition and processing: Mike Selby