This
Astrobin Debut Object is a group of 4 galaxies located in the constellation of Centaurus at a declination of -33 degrees. This was a tough one for me to image because of its low southern declination.
The
Hickson catalog is a collection of 100 galaxy clusters published by Paul Hickson in 1982. A typical Hickson cluster has 4 galaxies, as this one has, but can have up to 7. The magnitudes here range from 13 for the brightest galaxy (63b) down to 17 for the dimmest (63d).
Although this seems like a 4 galaxy cluster, only 3 of them are in close proximity. The outlier is the bright edge-on spiral Hickson 63a, which is much closer than the other 3. It is 250 million light years away and is 80,000 light years in diameter.
The other 3 galaxies – Hickson 63b, c and d - are all about 420 million light years away. The star of the show here is Hickson 63b, a graceful grand spiral galaxy whose arm asymmetry is fascinating to me. It is a large spiral at 150,000 light years in diameter. The arm asymmetry could be due to interaction from one or both of the close small galaxies (63c and 63d).
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