This
Astrobin Debut Object is a galaxy group of 6 galaxies, called Hickson 15, located 0.3 billion light years away in the constellation of Cetus at a declination of +2 degrees.
The Hickson catalog is a collection of 100 galaxy groups, established by Paul Hickson in 1982. Hickson compact galaxy groups are tightly spaced and somewhat isolated from other galaxies. A typical Hickson group has 4 galaxies, but some have up to 8. You can see more about Hickson galaxy groups in my
Astrobin Hickson Collection.
The largest and brightest galaxy in this image, Hickson 15a, is also known as UGC 1624. It is a magnitude 13 edge-on lenticular orange spiral that spans 1.3 arc-minutes, which corresponds to a Milky Way size diameter of 120,000 light years. The other 5 Hickson galaxies, 4 orange ellipticals and a blue spiral, are all about 100,000 light years in diameter.
I don’t see any disturbance here, which likely means that they are too far apart from each other to be interacting significantly.
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