Grus Quartet Widefield

This rich wide-field captures the Grus Quartet - a compact group of four barred spiral galaxies (NGC 7552, NGC 7582, NGC 7590, and NGC 7599) in the southern constellation of Grus. Located roughly 60–70 million light‑years away, two of its members - NGC 7552 and NGC 7582 - are luminous infrared galaxies hosting active Seyfert nuclei and likely undergoing starburst episodes triggered by mutual interactions.

- NGC 7552 is a face-on barred spiral (type SB(s)ab) featuring a pseudo-ring of H II regions, dusty bar, and dramatic circumnuclear star formation.

- NGC 7582, also an active Seyfert galaxy, shares an H I gas bridge with NGC 7552 - clear evidence of gravitational interaction.

- NGC 7599 is a barred spiral with multiple arms, dust lanes, and possibly Ongoing star formation in its outer disk - linked to its neighbor NGC 7590 by a faint hydrogen bridge

- NGC 7590, though less documented, completes the quartet and further illustrates the dynamic environment of this compact group.

A southern target that renders quite well, thanks to 8 hours of LRGB integration using the Takahashi FSQ-106 at Telescope Live's Australian facility. The data was rather clean - only minor "dust donuts" appeared post-stacking and star removal, which were repaired using the Clone Stamp tool. A masked stretch was applied separately to the RGB and Luminance channels to preserve faint background galaxies and clusters, while enabling subtle enhancement of the quartet’s fine detail. After masked stretch was applied it became apparent that brighter stars had major elongation and rejection artifact issues. Had do apply careful masking, ACDNR and bright-point adjustments in order to address them. Final image still has some of those if you look closely.

Sources:

www.irida-observatory.org

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_7552

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_7599

astrodrudis.com

Data credit: Telescope.Live