This group of galaxies is about 170 million light years away. NGC 7769 is the face on spiral Sa/Sc to the upper right. NGC 7771 is the barred spiral with tidal arms. Below it is the double nucleus NGC 7770. This guy has a really odd tidal arm coming down that ends abruptly like it was cut off. Really odd. So why the double core? Two merging galaxies? Between 7769 and 7771 is the very blue NGC 7771A. It is far bluer than the others. NGC 7771 had a super nova back in 2003. I'm a bit late to catch it.

Toward and above them in the center is the interesting Seyfert spiral MGC+03-60-031 with nice spiral arms superimposed on a faint, featureless disk. Rather odd looking to me. It is 550 million light years distant so a rather large galaxy. Below it and looking like it is part of the quartet is PGC 214992. At least that's what The Sky says. NED and SIMBAD don't know of it at all. So I have no idea how it fits in. Since many very faint dwarf members of the group are listed and barely visible in my shot I assume it has nothing to do with the group. On the far right is another obvious galaxy unknown to The Sky and to SIMBAD and NED. I can't find anything but catalog numbers without much useful data other than position for the other "bright" galaxies in the image.

These were taken a couple months ago with moonlight. I'm just now starting to cope with minor moon gradients. Without the moon I'm sure I'd bring out a lot more of the outer arms of NGC 7769. This will have to do for this year.

14" LX200R, L=4x10' binned 2x2, RGB=2x10' binned 3x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Rick

Attached Images

NGC7771L4X10RGB2X10X3-7.jpg (137.3 KB, 47 views)