[DeepSkyBagger (Patrick)]

Hello All,

I thought I'd introduce myself by posting an observation I made a while ago of Stephan's Quintet in Pegasus. It's something of a stretch for my 12" reflector from my light polluted home base, but I made this observation from my dark sky site in the English Lake District in 2014.

From this location, Stephan's Quintet transits at a comfortable 64 degrees above the horizon, and this observation was made at transit. This particular night (20/09/2014) was far from the best I have experienced there, with the NELM being around 5.5. There was a fairly heavy dew. The Milky Way was visible across the whole sky. My session was accompanied by the sound of owls in the surrounding woodlands, and the honking of high-flying migrating geese.

NGC 7317: (mag 13.6, SB 11.9) Small and round. Fairly bright. The middle is brighter and there may be a stellar nucleus.

NGC 7318: (mag 13.4, SB 14.0) Faint. Pretty large and elongated with a brighter central area. NGC 7318 is actually two galaxies almost superimposed on one another, and labelled as NGC 7318A and 7318B. They were not resolved and visually appeared very similar to the neighbouring NGC 7320.

NGC 7319: (mag 13.1, SB 13.5) Very faint, pretty large and elongated. No sign of central brightening or any other structure.

NGC 7320: (mag 12.6, SB 12.9) Faint. Pretty large and elongated with a brighter central area. Visually very similar to its neighbour NGC 7318.

The more distant and much fainter NGC 7320C was not seen.