This
Astrobin Debut Object is a galaxy group of 6 galaxies located just over 0.5 billion light years away in the constellation of Serpens at a declination of +21 degrees. Unlike many Hickson objects, this is a true galaxy group and all of them are 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 Hickson galaxy groups in my
Astrobin Hickson Collection.
The largest and brightest galaxy in this image, Hickson 75a, is an elliptical that is about 130,000 light years in diameter. Despite this being a tight circle of galaxies, all within 500,000 light years, I don’t see much disturbance here. This likely means that they are a bit too far apart from each other to be interacting significantly.
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