The Deer Lick Group - Rachel Stratton
The Deer Lick Group, also known as the NGC 7331 Group, is a visual group of galaxies within the constellation Pegasus. The larger galaxy in the group is the unbarred spiral galaxy NGC 7331 and the four other galaxies, or “fleas”, are the unbarred spiral galaxies NGC 7335 and 7336, the barred spiral galaxy NGC 7337, and the elliptical galaxy NGC 7340. This group of 5 galaxies is referred to as a visual grouping instead of a traditional one because while they can be seen in the same area of the sky, they are not close enough to each other to be considered part of the same group; NGC 7331 is approximately 40 million light years away while the other four range from approximately 294-365 million light years away.
Instructor note: This group of galaxies got its name after amateur astronomer Tom Lorenzin had a memorable view of it from the Deer Lick Gap in the mountains of North Caroline.
Details
For this image, a Celestron C8 Schmidt-Cassegrain reflecting telescope mounted on a Skywatcher EQ6-R mount was used to track the galaxy group and a light pollution filter was used to minimize light from the surrounding area. The camera used was a ZWO ASI 294MC-Pro color camera that was cooled to -10 C so as to reduce thermal noise from the sensor. 35 three minute frames were taken using the Ekos imaging suite while a guide telescope and camera also connected to Ekos monitored and corrected mount movement so as to keep the group in frame/focus during exposure.
