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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