NGC 7331 is an unbarred spiral galaxy in Pegasus. I show it here with a large number of other galaxies in the same region. NGC 7331 is irregular for several reasons. As one can see in this photo, the central disk is slightly off center. Secondly, it is believed that the central disk rotates in the opposite direction as the rest of the spiral arms. Both of these are tell-tale signs that a galactic merger occurred "recently"; however there is no other evidence to support this theory that I can find. I did find a couple articles by other amateur astrophotographers espousing the same theory so that makes me feel a little better
As you can probably tell this one is at the limit of what my setup can handle. While the Hyperstar lens provides an awesome wide angle of view and is very fast, the reduction in focal length makes it tough to resolve very fine details in objects as small as this one (although I am happy I was able to bring out some of the dust lanes and HII regions as well as a barely visible "S" shaped structure in one of the galaxies towards the bottom). The high light pollution in my area as well as the (almost) full moon didn't help either. This was a tough project for me and I think for my next image I'm going to go back to a large nebula haha.
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