This
Astrobin Debut Object is a galaxy group of 5 galaxies, called Hickson 22, located in the constellation of Eridanus at a declination of -16 degrees. Like many Hickson objects, these 5 galaxies are not a true group and are at 2 different distances from us.
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 in this image, Hickson 22a, is also known as NGC 1199. It is a magnitude 13 orange elliptical that is 110 million light years away. It spans 3.5 arc-minutes, which corresponds to a Milky Way size diameter of 120,000 light years. Hickson 22b and 22c, two spiral galaxies, are also about the same distance away.
The 2 small orange ellipticals at the bottom, Hickson 22d and 22e, are not part of the above group. These 2 are 3x further away, at over 0.4 billion light years from us.
I don't see much disturbance here in either of the 2 groups, which likely means that, within each group, the galaxies are too far apart from each other to be interacting. Hickson 22b has the most interesting structure, with a bright thin white bar and a very diffuse bluish outer disk.
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