Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Pegasus (Peg)  ·  Contains:  NGC 7317  ·  NGC 7318  ·  NGC 7319  ·  NGC 7320
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Stephen's Quintet, William Maxwell
Stephen's Quintet
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Stephen's Quintet

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Stephen's Quintet, William Maxwell
Stephen's Quintet
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Stephen's Quintet

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Description

Another surprisingly, to me anyway, small target. Even at 1214mm its rather small in the frame.

Luminance mostly  from the Starfinder, color  from the Edge. 

On a different note... I noticed on the bottom of my Starfinder 8 mirror a handwritten indication of focal length (in inches- slightly "faster" than spec). It must have been made in the US near the end of US made Meade products, but beyond that there is something to an era where each mirror is inspected, measured, and marked individually. The Starfinder GEM series is much maligned, even by Ed Ting, and in all fairness much was pretty poor (like the mounting system, focuser, finder...), but I have yet to fully match the caliber of the optics. Even the nearly 30 year old mirror coatings are still in great shape. 

I have one other similarly marked scope, a Star Instruments Rich Field 6", also US made (in the late 1970s )and also a superb performer. I don't think its the US made per se, but a different focus. There are many beautiful telescopes made today, but in general the philosophy has shifted to higher outputs. I can't imagine  most scopes being inspected and measured by hand these days.

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Stephen's Quintet, William Maxwell

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Cloudy Nights