This was a target that I did last year, but I was not happy with it for several reasons. I decided to re-image it from scratch. I began imaging it at the end of September, and October was nothing but clouds each and every night. I was finally able to finish it with three clear nights last weekend. Overall, I was able to collect about 30 hours of data on these targets.
The large galaxy to the right of center is called the Deer Lick, NGC 7331. This galaxy is about 40 million light years away. Surrounding it, colloquially the “fleas”, are a handful of smaller galaxies, which are much more distant at around 400 to 500 million light years away.
The blob to the left of center is Stephan’s Quintet. Though there are five galaxies in the area of the image, the blue galaxy, NGC 7320, is actually at about the same distance from us as the Deer Lick. The other four galaxies are true interacting galaxies at a distance of 300 million light years from us, and they will eventually merge into a new single galaxy.
A full annotation of the image follows,
