Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Pegasus (Peg)  ·  Contains:  NGC 7315  ·  NGC 7317  ·  NGC 7318  ·  NGC 7319  ·  NGC 7320  ·  NGC 7331  ·  NGC 7333  ·  NGC 7336  ·  NGC 7337  ·  NGC 7338  ·  NGC 7340  ·  NGC 7342  ·  NGC 7343  ·  NGC 7345  ·  PGC 141035  ·  PGC 141039  ·  PGC 141041  ·  PGC 1987453  ·  PGC 1996659  ·  PGC 1996777  ·  PGC 1998624  ·  PGC 2008020  ·  PGC 2008677  ·  PGC 2010202  ·  PGC 2011830  ·  PGC 2018535  ·  PGC 2023564  ·  PGC 2025546  ·  PGC 2028389  ·  PGC 2030454  ·  And 64 more.
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Stephan's Quintet and The Deer Lick group, JDAstroPhoto
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Stephan's Quintet and The Deer Lick group

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Stephan's Quintet and The Deer Lick group, JDAstroPhoto
Powered byPixInsight

Stephan's Quintet and The Deer Lick group

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

As we peer through the window which is our own galaxy, we look through billions of stars in our own galaxy, across intergalactic space, to discover new galaxies camouflaged by our own galaxy's stars.  One such group is Stephan's Quintet (lower left of middle), a group of 5 galaxies in Pegasus discovered in 1877.  4 out of the 5 galaxies are 280 million light-years from earth and are interacting with each other (if you look closely at full resolution you can see the cores interacting with each other).  Since we are seeing what these galaxies looked like 280 million years ago, chances are they have already merged into one or more larger galaxies.  The blueish galaxy, NGC7320 is much closer to earth (39 million light-years) and not interacting with the other 4.  
To the right and up of center you will see the Deer Lick Galaxy group.  This group has 5 galaxies with NGC7331 being the biggest as well as the closest to earth, 30 million light-years away.  The other 4 being 300 million light years away. There is another interesting cluster of galaxies to the right of the Deer Lick group at NGC7345. This is a fascinating part of the sky that contains many galaxies, I encourage you to roam around at full resolution and see how many you can find.
The colors you are seeing are true, what you would see if your eyes were sensitive enough.  For example the blue tinted stars are 10 to 150 times as large as our Sun and blue to our eyes, because they are much hotter than our Sun.  Cooler stars than our Sun are red.
This image covers over 3 degrees in the night sky and the camera has 60 Megapixels at 1.4 arcsecond per pixel.  It reveals the beauty of the Universe from far away, and yet detail of the galaxies as you load the full resolution image.  A Deep Field image (to borrow nomenclature from Hubble).

Acquisition:
I captured this data using Red, Green, Blue and Luminance filters over 3 nights 9/21/2022, 9/23/2022 and 9/26/2022 at my Astronomy Club's dark sky property, San Diego Astronomy Association (SDAA) at Tierra Del Sol, Bortle 3 location.  I camped there overnight on all three nights.  Broad band images (full spectrum, RGB) of galaxies need to be acquired at a dark sky, otherwise the images will be swamped by light pollution and galaxy detail will be lacking.  
I took a total of 81 - 15 minute (20.25 hours) exposures of visible light (Red, Green, Blue, Luminance).

35 Exposures 15 minutes each, unguided, Luminance = 8.75 hours
17 Exposures 15 minutes each, unguided, Red = 4.25 hours
16 Exposures 15 minutes each, unguided, Green = 4.00 hours
13 Exposures 15 minutes each, unguided, Blue = 3.25 hours
Total Exposure 20.25 hours

I've added a plate solving algorithm from PixInsight which overlays the image and identifies the objects in the Star Catalogs.  
Click on the image, Top right click on full resolution, After it loads, top right, click on "Fit to Window".  
All the NGC PGC objects identified in this image are galaxies.  Hover your cursor over one of the catalog objects and click on the object and the full resolution image will come up, you will be able to identify the galaxies.

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Stephan's Quintet and The Deer Lick group, JDAstroPhoto

In these public groups

SDAA AISIG Group