Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Pegasus (Peg)  ·  Contains:  NGC 7317  ·  NGC 7318  ·  NGC 7319  ·  NGC 7320  ·  NGC 7331  ·  NGC 7335  ·  NGC 7337  ·  Stephan's Quintet
NGC 7331 (Deer Lick Group) and Stephan's Quintet Widefield in Pegasus, astrobillbinMontana
NGC 7331 (Deer Lick Group) and Stephan's Quintet Widefield in Pegasus
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NGC 7331 (Deer Lick Group) and Stephan's Quintet Widefield in Pegasus

NGC 7331 (Deer Lick Group) and Stephan's Quintet Widefield in Pegasus, astrobillbinMontana
NGC 7331 (Deer Lick Group) and Stephan's Quintet Widefield in Pegasus
Powered byPixInsight

NGC 7331 (Deer Lick Group) and Stephan's Quintet Widefield in Pegasus

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Shown in this widefield image is NGC 7331, a beautiful highly tilted spiral galaxy that is often cited in the literature as an appearance analog of our own Milky Way Galaxy. It is located about 50 million light years from Earth in the northern Constellation of Pegasus. Visible to the north of NGC 7331 are some more distant background galaxies that are roughly 10 times farther away from us than NGC 7331. This visual grouping is often called by its popular name, The Deer Lick Group.

Located half a degree to the SSW of NGC 7331 is a tight little group of galaxies called Stephan's Quintet, consisting of NGC 7317, 7318A, 7318B, 7319, and 7320. Burnham indicates that this group of galaxies show widely discordant red shifts making it difficult for astronomers to determine if the group is expanding or is in fact in the process of disintegrating. Time will tell on that one.

With less than an hour of total integration time associated with this image, much detail is lacking. Nevertheless, it does nicely illustrate the relationship of these two galaxy groupings in space as seen from our vantage point here on Earth.

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NGC 7331 (Deer Lick Group) and Stephan's Quintet Widefield in Pegasus, astrobillbinMontana