There are plenty of star clusters out there, but I was interested in shooting a cluster of Galaxies. Stephen's Quintet is high enough this time of year that it clears my trees about midnight, so I started to plan on capturing that. I soon realized that I could get two for the price of one, as The Deer Lick Galaxy group would fit in the same frame if I composed the shot well.

Stephan' Quintet, the group of 5 small galaxies in the lower left of the frame, was the first compact galaxy group ever cataloged, by Edouard Stephens in 1877. The group consists of 5 galaxies: NGC 7317 is an elliptical galaxy. NGC 7318 Is actually two galaxies that are converging and they show sides of distortion. NGC 7319 is another interacting spiral galaxy. Finally NGC 7320 is the brightest of the group with a blue coloration. Four of the galaxies are actually from a common cluster - these are all 300 Million light years away. The bright blue one, however, is only 60 Million light years away so it is really a galaxy that happens to be in the line of sight.

The other group, located towards the top left, is the Deer Lick Group. Why the "Deer Lick Group" ? - no idea! The Largest galaxy seen here is NGC 7331. This is a spiral galaxy located about 46 Million Light years away and was discovered by Sir William Hershel in 1784. It was the brightest object that was missed by Messier when he was making his famous catalog. NGC 7331 is very similar in size and structure to our own Milky Way Galaxy. The other members of this group consist, seen above NGC 7331 in this shot, including NGC 7335 and NGC 7337, which are smaller Spiral galaxies.

This image was the result of 90 x 150 second subs.

Here are the image details:

90 x 150 seconds bin 1x1 -15C

50 x 2 second Bias exposures

25 x 150 second Dark exposures

50 Flats

Scope: William Optics 132mm FLT F/7 APO

Guide Scope: Apterna 60mm

Camera: ZWO ASI294MC-Pro

Guide Camera: ZWO ASI290Mini

Focus Motor: Pegasus Astro Focus Cube 2

Field Rotator: Pegasus Astro Falcon

Mount: Ioptron CEM60

Polar Alignment: Ioptron Ipolar integrated alignment cameras

Capture Software: PHD2 Guider, Sequence Generator Pro controller

Image Processing: Deepsky Stacker, Pixinsight, Photoshop