Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Pegasus (Peg)  ·  Contains:  NGC 7317  ·  NGC 7318  ·  NGC 7319  ·  NGC 7320  ·  NGC 7331  ·  NGC 7333  ·  NGC 7335  ·  NGC 7336  ·  NGC 7337  ·  NGC 7338  ·  NGC 7340  ·  Stephan's Quintet
NGC 7331 Deer Lick Group & Stephan's Quintet, Mark Germani
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NGC 7331 Deer Lick Group & Stephan's Quintet

NGC 7331 Deer Lick Group & Stephan's Quintet, Mark Germani
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NGC 7331 Deer Lick Group & Stephan's Quintet

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Description

I imaged these targets on a bit of a lark, and also as an excuse not to attach the reducer to my telescope and start fussing with backfocus and tilt all over again. They're a bit teensy for my FL, and I had some incredibly poor conditions for two of the nights, but I think they turned out ok! It was a real challenge to get much colour from them. Maybe worth a revisit next fall...


THE DEER LICK GROUP

The Deer Lick group is not a proper galactic group - they're not gravitationally bound, but rather are a visual grouping of galaxies:

deer_lick_inset.jpg
NGC 7331 itself is a beautiful flocculent spiral galaxy located about 45 million light years away. While gravitationally unassociated with the rest of the group, it is possibly associated with one of the members of Stephan's Quintet...


STEPHAN'S QUINTET

The very first compact galaxy group ever discovered, NGC 7317, NGC 7318a & 7318b (two merging galaxies), and NGC 7319 are about six times more distant than the Deer Lick galaxy at 290 million light years, and are the inspiration for the galaxies seen in Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life".

stephans_quintet_inset.jpg

NGC 7320, shown above in bold, joins the aforementioned quartet to make a quintet, but at 39 million light years away, is visually superimposed - a galactic photo-bomb! In a curious coincidence, it is quite possibly gravitationally bound to NGC 7331 instead.


SOURCES:

NASA Science, Caldwell 30: Head to a dark sky to see this galaxy's sweeping spiral arms in larger telescopes. https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/explore-the-night-sky/hubble-caldwell-catalog/caldwell-30/

NASA Science, NASA’s Webb Sheds Light on Galaxy Evolution, Black Holes. https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasas-webb-sheds-light-galaxy-evolution-black-holes/

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    NGC 7331 Deer Lick Group & Stephan's Quintet, Mark Germani
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  • NGC 7331 Deer Lick Group & Stephan's Quintet, Mark Germani
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Title: Full FOV

Description: So many faint fuzzies! Figured I'd include the full FOV version of this image.

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NGC 7331 Deer Lick Group & Stephan's Quintet, Mark Germani