Hickson 44 / NGC 3190 Galaxy Group

Object Data: NGC 3190 is at the centre of a fascinating group of gravitationally interacting galaxies, catalogued as Hickson 44, in the constellation of Leo. At lower left is NGC 3193, a face-on eliptical fairly devoid of detail, appearing more as a mysterious glow. Moving clockwise to above centre we find NGC 3187, an edge-on barred spiral with fantastically warped outer arms, giving it a surreal quality. Further clockwise on the right side we have NGC 3185, a face-on barred spiral that looks reassuringly normal in comparison. Back to the centre, NGC 3190 is a spiral type galaxy seen almost edge-on, but with arms clearly distorted through gravitational interaction with its neighbours. Also visible faintly at centre-right is MAC 1017+2146, and at upper-right, MAC 1017+2147. Date: 17/03/2007 Location: Southern France Conditions: Calm, heavy dew, transparency=7, seeing=7 Optics: RCOS 12.5" Ritchey-Chretien working at f/6.75 Mount: AP 900 GTO on Portable Pier Camera: SBIG ST-8E / CFW-8 Guiding: Integral ST-8E autoguider Exposure: LRGB: Luminance: 8x 15 minutes; RGB: 2x 15:15:24 minutes binned 2x2 Processing: Image acquisition and initial processing using Maxim DL, subsequent processing in RegiStar and Photoshop. Notes: Both seeing and transparency quite poor.