Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Pegasus (Peg)  ·  Contains:  NGC 7317  ·  NGC 7318  ·  NGC 7319  ·  NGC 7320  ·  Stephan's Quintet
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Stephan's Quintet, John Hayes
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Stephan's Quintet

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Stephan's Quintet, John Hayes
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Stephan's Quintet

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Description

I've been spending a lot of time in a comfortable zone doing pretty easy, bright objects and I decided to stretch out a little and try something a bit harder. Stephan's Quintet is comprised of four interacting galaxies at a distance of 210-340 MLy along with NGC 7320 in the foreground at a distance of "only" about 39 MLy. The closer galaxy (NGC 7320) is noticeably more blue than the more distant galaxies that have more significant redshift due to their cosmological recession of around 6,600 km/sec. It is fascinating to think about the effects of two galaxies colliding and some of the arcs in this image are the result of interstellar shock waves that were generated by the "collision." I've been fascinated by this cluster of interacting galaxies since I first learned about it and I've been wanting to attempt to image it for some time. None of the galaxies in this group are brighter than about 14th magnitude and NGC 7320C is 16.7 so it's not a totally trivial object. I finally took a shot at it but along the way, I ran into wind, super poor seeing, clouds, smoke (with poor transparency,) and really warm temperatures (which didn't help my uncooled DSLR at all!) Undaunted, I spent about 6 nights over two months on this image and here's the result. I'm certain that it's not as good as I could do with a better camera and better conditions but it's not bad for a first try with an "uncooled" modified DSLR camera. As always, C&C is always welcome. Let me know what you think...

John

PS This image is a tipping point. I can see the value in temperature control, larger fill factor, and increase QE on faint difficult object like this one so I'm going to start looking for a "better" camera going forward.

PPS The latest version has noise much better under control. I think that it looks better but I'll take any help I can get! So let me know what you think...

PPPS Never satisfied, I completely restacked this data with drizzling. I'm happier with the noise control and overall balance of the detail. Hopefully, it looks a bit better.

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    Original
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Stephan's Quintet, John Hayes

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