This object is a pair of interacting galaxies located 115 million light years away in the constellation of Pisces at a declination of +2 degrees. The intense bright star in close proximity is the 5.6 magnitude star 16 Piscium, about 100 light years away.
NGC 7715 is seen edge on at the left and distorted NGC 7714 is on the right. Each of these galaxies is about 3 arc-minutes wide in our apparent view, which corresponds to a diameter for each of 100,000 light years. I find the twisting structure of NGC 7714 to be especially fascinating. It is classified as a Wolf-Rayet starburst galaxy. In fact, this galaxy was the very first to be labelled with the term "starburst galaxy".
I like the contrast between the yellow and blue colors in the image. NGC 7714’s disk and stream is primarily yellow, indicating older stars, but blue star formation areas are seen both above and below the core. By comparison, NGC 7715’s distortion seem tame, although I find its core interesting in that it is not yellow but blue, and contains 3 bright blue star clouds. The galaxies are likely in the process of merging into a single galaxy, as indicated by the connected tidal star streams.
The smallest "dots" resolvable in my image, for example in the bridge, are HII regions. The smallest blue dots visible in the Hubble image are star clusters, of which 175 have been identified so far.
Dr. Arp classified this object in the category of Double Galaxies – Infall and Attraction.
I captured this same object recently (shown
here) with my Tak130, so the 2 images are a nice comparison of the differences in capturing a small object with a medium-size refractor vs. a large SCT.
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