Space Neighbors

One night this autumn I wanted to see if I could get a photo of galaxy NGC 6207 in the constellation Hercules.  Looking at its co-ordinates I realized it was right next door to M13, the Great Star Cluster, so I tried to get them both in a single wide frame using my 127mm refractor and the observatory’s ASI533MC camera.  I stacked 40 frames of 8 seconds each to get this picture.  M13 is in the lower right and the targeted galaxy is clearly seen in the upper central portion of the frame.  I was rather pleased that I got such a good image of this magnitude 11.6 galaxy.  Once I got home and looked at the image more closely, I realized that I had also imaged an even smaller galaxy.  Look at the photo and you can see a small lens shape about halfway between NGC 6207 and the star cluster.  This little guy is IC 4617 (aka PGC 2085077).  It has a magnitude of only about 15 so I was delighted to be able to see it.  According to red-shift data it lies at a distance of about 480 million light years from here.  NGC 6207 is a mere 30 million light years away whereas the star cluster nudges up to us at a cozy 22 thousand light years.