Tha larger of the galaxies here, NGC 3718, is being warped by gravitational tidal effects from NGC 3729, which is only 150,000 light years away from it. These 2 galaxies are 52 million light years from us.
The Hickson 56 group of 5 interacting galaxies in the upper left of the
image lies at the enormous distance of 400 million light years, so the
light that hit my detector left between the end of the Devonian epoch,
when fish and amphibians first appeared, and the beginning of the Carboniferous
epoch, when the swamps that gave rise to coal existed.
Click on image below
for full size version
Luminance. 50 x 6 minutes binned 1x1
Red. 25 x 220 seconds binned 2x2
Green & Blue24 x 240 seconds binned 2x2.
Flats and bias applied.
