Due to heavy extinction by dust in the vicinity, it is invisible to optical observation and must be studied in the X-ray, radio, and infrared bands.

[5] The Quintuplet was originally identified in 1983 as a pair of infra-red sources in a 2.5 micron survey of the galactic centre.

GCS-3 was later resolved into four sources, labelled I-IV, that together with GCS-4 formed a compact quintuplet of unusually bright small objects.

[7] In 1990, a total of 15 sources in the Quintuplet region was studied in more detail at several wavelengths, later referred to by Q or GMM (after the authors Glass, Moneti, and Moorwood) numbers.

[11][12] The cluster was also catalogued as a first magnitude "stellar" source at 4.2 microns in the Air Force Geophysics Lab survey and given the number 2004 (AFGL 2004).

[3] The galactic centre is considered to be about 8 kpc away, so the projected distance of the Quintuplet on the sky is 30 pc from Sagittarius A*.