The Deer Lick group and Stephan’s Quintett

About the Object

What is better than one group of galaxies - well, two groups of galaxies, of course! And two of the most beautiful groups on the night sky are close enough together that one can get them one one frame w/o compromising the resolution for each of them (makes me dream of a Delta Rho with and IMX461 ...): NGC 7331  and friends (aka the Deer Lick group) and Stephan's Quintett around NGC 7318. I add zoom-ins on both groups as revision B and C, respectively, but keep the full setting (and possible future revisions of it) as the main image here. Besides these two main players, a considerable number of background galaxies can be found in the field. BTW, the blue NGC7320 in Stephan's Quintett kind of "photobombed" the setting - it not associate to the group around NGC7318 but a foreground object - and made the apparent ensemble even more beautiful!

Observation Notes

As I have written on this site about two years ago, I have a special relation to Stephan's Quintett as an article describing the hunt to visually see it on a trip in the Bavarian Alps triggered my imagination as a high school student some 40 years ago ...

Data were taken on 2024 August 6,8,10,11,12, and 13.

PS:  I am still in the process of experimenting with my new FF camera, and in some of the nights had issues with some mild light leaks/reflection, which made gradient removal a bit of a pain - so on Aug 15 I took half a night of WF imaging with my ASKAR FRA 400 and used that data to remove residual gradients following the excellent write up on multi scale gradient removal by the PixInsight team - which works (again) like a charm.  Can't wait to have MARS ...

Technical Details

View the full-resolution image together with complete acquisition and processing details on AstroBin.