This
Astrobin Debut Object is a galaxy group of 4 galaxies, called Hickson 30, located 210 million light years away in the constellation of Eridanus at a declination of -3 degrees. Unlike many Hickson objects, this is a true galaxy group and all of them are at the same distance away.
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, Hickson 30a, is also known as LEDA 15620. It is a pretty orange magnitude 12 barred face-on spiral with 2 faint spiral arms. It spans 1.4 arc-minutes, which corresponds to a diameter of 90,000 light years. The other 3 galaxies, Hickson 30b, c, and d, are the same distance away and slightly smaller in size. I don’t see much disturbance here, which likely means that they are too far apart from each other to be interacting.
This Hickson group is one of only 14 (out of the Hickson 100) groups where all of the galaxies in the group are spiral galaxies.
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