NGC5371, Hickson 68, PGC 49480 and a few bright stars

About the Object

The area around NGC5371 is a quite interesting and aesthetically appealing field: NGC5371 is a nice spiral galaxy on its own right, as ist the Hickson compact group 68 featuring

NGC 5350 (another nice barred spiral), the pair of NGC 5353 and NGC5354, and a few other galaxies. The setting of this pair of objects at comparable distances - NGC 5371 (some 113 Mly) and Hickson 68 (some 100 Mly away)  is already quite appealing, but  gets nicely rounded off by the two-arm spiral PGC 49480 in the lower left, which is also located at a comparable distance.

Observation Notes

Bright stars are often a nuisance in deep sky imaging, in particular if the are close to the targeted deep sky object, but here the colorful HD 121197 (yellow), HD 121147 (blue) near Hickson 68, and the yellow BD+41 2441  (near NGC5371) add nicely to the overall ensemble, I think.

Data were taken on 2024 May 5, 8 and 9.

Technical Details

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