NGC 7331 and Stephen's Quintet
At the last 2 star parties with the Pocatello Astronomical Society they brought out the 20 inch telescope which is the largest in the club. It is an f5 with a focal length of 100 inches. You have to stand on a step later to get to the eyepiece unless the telescope is pointing near the horizon. When looking at the Veil SNR you can see a lot of detail without a filter. With a filter you get even more detail. So Mike Beer and myself decided to go for Stephen's Quintet. This is a small apparent compact group of galaxies about 2 arc minutes in diameter. Because the object is so dim and small we star hop to a larger brighter region of galaxies around a 10 arc minute galaxy 9th magnitude NGC 7331 or also known in the Caldwell catalogue as C30. This is a nice spiral galaxy with a large dark lane. There are several smaller galaxies around NGC 7331. When looking through the eyepiece on the 20 inch I noticed seeing several smaller dim galaxies above NGC 7331. We knew Stephens Quintet was close to the area but we weren't sure how close and which direction from NGC 7331. I knew it was a smaller area than NGC 7331. I decided to photograph this area to get the details so next time I observe in this area I will know what to look for. The galaxies in Stephens photographed better than expected. I got about 3.5 hours of exposure on these deep sky objects. There are 5 galaxies that can be seen in the small area of Stephens. Two galaxies look like bared spiral galaxies that are colliding. Then another bared spiral galaxy that has a long arm between the other 2 galaxies. There is one of the galaxies that I am guessing is an elliptical and then a spiral galaxy that is more compact and brighter.
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