Deer Lick Group (NGC 7331 et al)

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About this Image

This deep exposure is centered on NGC 7331, a famous spiral galaxy, discovered by William Herschel in 1784.
Reportedly, Tomm Lorenzin (author of "1000+ The Amateur Astronomers' Field Guide to Deep Sky Observing") gave the name to the NGC 7331 group in honor of Deer Lick Gap in the mountains of North Carolina where he observed and once had an especially fine view of this group of galaxies.

NGC 7331, sometimes referred to as our galaxy's twin, is found in the constellation Pegasus at a distance of 49 million light-years. The other brighter galaxies around NGC 7331 are 10x more distant far in the background, on the top from left to right, NGC 7337 NGC 7340, NGC 7335, NGC 7336, PGC 2051985, to the bottom NGC 7325 and NGC 7326.

North is right.

References: 1. 2. 3.

 


Technical Details
Optics

16" cassegrain in secondary focus at f/10

Mount MK-100 GEM
Camera SBIG STL-11000M with AO-L at -25C, internal filter wheel
Filters Astronomik LRGB
Date Oct 10-16, 2006.
Location Wildon/Austria
Sky Conditions mag 5 sky, L: raw FWHM 1.5-2", temperature 5-12 C
Exposure L:R:G:B = 740:160:120:180 minutes (20-minute sub-exposures), total 20 h, all 1x1;
Processing Image aquisition in Maxim 4.56, calibration and preprocessing in CCDStack, final processing in Photoshop CS2