Hickson 55 in Draco

[Mike JW]

A busy night last night. When ever I go after Hicksons I end up in a dilemma. They are compact targets so if I use a fast set up they end up tiny on the screen whereas if I use the C9 at f10 they are bigger  but of course it takes longer to capture the image. So I tried f4.4 and f10 and un-binned and binned and varied the sub time. The best result was 14 x 20 sec subs, no binning.

Hickson 55 is a wonderful knotty string of 5 tiny  galaxies, looks like a snake?  The smallest galaxy (e) may not be part of the group. This group is also part of the Arp list and classed as a galaxy chain.

 

Hickson 55 in Draco, also known as Arp 329
Name	Letter	Mag	Type	Code
UGC 6514	A	17.2	spiral	Sa
UGC 6514	B	17.4	elliptical	E
UGC 6514	C	15.8	lenticular	SO
UGC 6514	D	17	lenticular	SO
UGC 6514	E	16.8	elliptical	E-SO

Image below has been cropped, and brightened in Photoshop.

 

Any thoughts on how best to capture these tiny groups, most welcome.

Mike