Stephan's Quintett is a small dim cluster of galaxies consisting of NGCs 7320, 7317, 7319, 7318-1 and 7318-2 with 7320C off to the left. Its relatively easy to capture some "smudges" for the galaxies in this cluster. For example, this image comes from my SC1 webcam. Last year I improved this result using the SC3 camera with this result. I think the image to the right is *just* better, but only slightly. For example, the long tail on 7319 is more visible. Conditions were fair hazy with fog and mist, so it should be possible to improve. A good reference image is found here.
Captured in k3, stacked in registax and curves and minimum filter in photoshop. The stack consisted of quite long (50s) exposures with the gain about 80%. Hazy skies caused quite high amounts of background muck. A sample raw frame can be found here.
Exposure Details :
27x50s on 200mm @ F5 with SC3.5
Curdridge Observatory, Southampton,UK