An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics

A group of galaxies about 190 million → light-years away in
the head portion of the constellation → Serpens. The group appears to contain six members, but actually contains only four → interacting galaxies. A face-on → spiral galaxy lies in the distant background and appears only by chance aligned with the main group. Also, a prominent condensation is likely not a separate galaxy, but a → tidal tail of stars flung out by the galaxies’ gravitational interactions. The interacting galaxies are tightly packed into a region around 100,000 light-years across, comparable to the size of our own Milky Way galaxy, making this one of the densest known galaxy groups.

See also: Discovered by the American astronomer Carl Keenan Seyfert (1911-1960) using photographic plates made at the Barnard Observatory of Vanderbilt University. → sextet.