NGC 7320
Stephan's Quintet

NGC 7320
Stephan's Quintet: NGC 7320 is the relatively nearby ("only" ~40 Mly) spiral galaxy along the line of sight towards the much more distant group of galaxies that are about 200 Mly away. The distant group contains NGC 7317, 7318a, 7318b, and 7319. There are also many more much fainter, and much more distant, galaxies visible in the background of this image.

NGC: 7320
Right Ascension: 22h 36.0m
Declination: 33° 57'

Date: August 2009
Equipment:
Telescope: Meade 16" Schmidt Cassegrain with f6.3 reducer
Camera: SBIG ST-10XE
Guiding: Meade 5" refractor/DSI Pro/PHD
Exposure: 10x10 minutes clear filter.
Processing Notes: Data acquisition with CCDSoft. Reduced and aligned in CCDStack. Combined in Sigma Beta. Arcsine stretch import into Photoshop. Tweaked the curve. Slight blur on the dim areas and sharpening on non-star bright areas. ~25% minimum filter on the brighter stars.

Links to images of this object on other sites:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090911.html
http://www.celestronimages.com/details.php?image_id=4214

Additional Comments: This was taken early in the morning with better than typical tracking. All ten 10-minute subframes were used, which is something of a first at this observatory. FWHM was ~3".

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