This object lies way off the main highway.  In fact, Robert's Quartet is so rarely imaged that I was only able to find a single image of this region here on AB, taken ten years ago.  One of the reasons might be that it's pretty small so you need a big scope with pretty good image scale.  I came across this object in an unusual way.  I had a copy of the October issue of National Geographic magazine that came out last September featuring images from JWST and in it, there was a sky map showing the location various random objects.  I immediately noticed "Robert's Quartet, which I had never heard of!  I did a little research on it and realized that with a group diameter of only 1.6 arc-minutes, it would be a challenge even for the 20" and even then, it would require a spell of good seeing.  Still, it seemed like an interesting target off the beaten path that was worth a try.  The folks at the ESO southern observatory have posted some spectacular images of this grouping taken with one of their very large telescopes and you can check that out here:  https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0535a/

Roberts Quartet is a compact galaxy group with four very different galaxies that was first discovered by John Herschel in 1834.  It is located in the constellation of the Phoenix at a distance of about 160 million ly.  NGC 87 is an irregular galaxy similar to the Magellanic Clouds.  NGC 88 is a spiral galaxy and NGC 89 is another spiral with two distinct spiral arms.  NGC 92 is the brightest member of the group with a magnitude of 13.8.  It's a type Sa galaxy with a one distorted arm about 100,000 ly long, which is thought to have been distorted by interactions with another galaxy in the group.  In 1987, Halton Arp and Berry Adore named this galaxy group after Robert Freedman who worked on updating the positions of galaxies in Arp's catalog.  The compact, face-on spiral galaxy on the left side of the field is PGC 1452.

I started this project with the idea that I'd take about 20 hrs of data in each of the four channels so that I could extract a significant number of frames with sub-two arc-second data.  Ever since I tuned it up last April, my 20" has been a real workhorse turning out pretty good data.  I experienced 40%-50% yield when I shot NGC 1300 so I had high hopes for this image; but it wasn't to be.  The seeing during the early Chilean spring just wasn't cooperating!  I did indeed gather around 80 hours of data but at 2", the yield was only about 10%.  So, I had to open up the tolerance a bit to get the 10 hours that went into this image.  I find that kind of yield to be very discouraging!  Still, I was able to turn that data into a marginally acceptable result.  This image shows about a fifth of the full frame and after fooling with it for a while, this image represents about as much as I can pull out of this stack of data.  This is one of those objects that I'd really like to revisit next year with my 24" when I finally get it set up and running.  The longer focal length will be helpful but it will certainly require some better seeing to make it work.

John