This
Astrobin Debut Object is a group of 7 galaxies located in the constellation of Eridanus at a declination of -13 degrees. All 7 of these galaxies lie at a distance range from 420 to 460 million light years away.
The Hickson catalog is a collection of 100 small galaxy clusters. The collection was published by Paul Hickson in 1982. A typical Hickson cluster has 4 galaxies, but can have up to 7 as in this case.
The central edge-on spiral, named 26a or LEDA 12611, is by far the largest galaxy at 150,000 light years in diameter. In contrast, the smallest galaxy (26f) is a dwarf that is only 20,000 light years in diameter.
The magnitudes for galaxies 26a through 26g here range from 16 for the brightest galaxy (26b) down to 19 for the dimmest (26f). This is interesting because the Hickson galaxies are always ordered alphabetically according to brightness. But it seems that the letter assignments were incorrect for this object, for both the brightest and dimmest objects.
Despite the close proximity of these galaxies, I only see two which appear to be interacting – 26a and 26b. 26a appears to have a blue star formation region at the left end of the edge-on disk, and 26b seem to have a plume that extends down and to the left.
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