This is a group of dwarf galaxies about 100 million light-years from us. The Hickson 68 Group consists of the five galaxies seen near the image center. The brightest star in the image marks the location of the five and its brightness complicates the image acquisition process due to its rays tending to overwhelm the camera's sensor.

The designations of the component galaxies are NGC 5350, NGC 5353, NGC 5354, Ngc 5355 and NGC 5358.

Dates Taken:
May 29,30 & 31, 2008
Location:
Ft. Griffin Historical Site, Texas
(dark skies about 120 miles west of Ft. Worth)
Telescope:
Takahashi TSA-102 f/8 at Prime Focus
Mount:
Astro-Physics Mach1GTO
Camera:
SBIG ST-8XME NABG w/ CFW-9, Astrodon RGB
Exposures:
Clear 245min, binned 1X1,5min subs; Red 72min; Green 56min; Blue80 min; all binned 2X2, 8min subs
Total LRGB: 7.5 hours
Processing:
CCDStack and Photoshop CS2

This image required significant processing time to remove an image
spanning bloom remnant. This resulted from shooting the luminance images
w/o a lum filter, causing huge blooms that were removed well with CCDStack,
however, the glow on each side of the bloom remained. It required dozens
of Curves and Levels adjustments in Photoshop CS2.