This has been my first data collection this year.  Lots of clouds and rain all winter and through April.  Then clearing, but with too much wind for me to set up in my exposed yard.  I collected a good deal of data in late May.  This data was collected with a good deal of wind and many subs were tossed.  Those saved were marginal at best.  I worked up the data, but was not satisfied with the depth of the images.  I love the obvious galaxy targets, but I always find the background targets to be a fun challenge and the first data set did not get deep enough for me to publish the effort.  On June 12th, I was able to collect much better data under clear and calm skies.  This nearly doubled the data.  Together, I was much happier with the result.  I know that for many, these fuzzies mostly just look like noise.  But I love the idea that there are so many galaxies out there.  And if you look under the NED database of this this field, there are literally thousands of galaxies in this field.  But my image goes no where deep enough to see that!

This is a very well posted field here on AstroBin, so I will leave the science and history background to the very well stated Descriptions from others on AstroBin.  I will say that I find the faint and very smooth star cloud that surrounds the two large, obviously interacting ellipticals in the Hickson group to be odd or contradictory.  Most interesting is the abrupt termination of that cloud in a slightly curved line in the rather extended lower section of that star stream.  It is remarkable that the interaction could create such a smooth extended star stream without the shells that seem so common in interacting ellipicals, yet there is clearly stuff going on that could cause such an abrupt edge.  On the other hand, my image is rather limited.  I am sure that a larger telescope would probably discover some flaws in my logic and deficiencies in this image!

In this second combined effort, the processing was very much easier to achieve the result I wanted.  And much less damage was done to those faint fuzzies that I love to see.