Hickson 44 (Leo Quartet)

On the same evening I observed M81 and M82 (the 18th March 2026), I had a go at observing the Hickson 44 galaxy group (also known as the Leo Quartet). These galaxies also appear in the Arp catalogue as Arp 316. What I hadn't anticipated was how small a group these galaxies appear as. Here is the result of 237x15s of observation (just short of an hour) with the Dwarf 3:-

 

The group can be just about made out in the centre of this image. The first frame was taken at 20:36 UT and the last at 21:51 UT. The gain was 60 and the astro filter was employed. Auto settings were used in Stellar Studio (you can click on this image to obtain a larger view). The image has been binned x2. Here is a cropped version of the full size image showing the galaxies in more detail:-

 

Here I have increased the colour saturation and sharpened the image in Photoshop. Moving from left to right we have; the elliptical galaxy NGC 3193 which looks rather stellar like; then the larger edge on spiral galaxy NGC 3190 with its warped central dust lane; above this is the smaller NGC 3187 where again gravitational interaction with other galaxies has stretched its spiral arms into tidal tails; and finally at the bottom right is the barred spiral NGC3185.

All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2026