It looks beautiful on PanSTARRS images. Looking at its image (attached to this post), at first I thought it was a gravitational lens object. But the ring is thought to have formed due to galaxy collision according to this paper.
It is located approximately 900 million light years away from us in the constellation of Andromeda, just east of Pegasus square.
Coordinates (J2000): 00 24 09.4 +25 25 08
Take a look at Fig. 3b of the discovery paper, showing the structure of these galaxies, and Table 2, showing visual magnitudes. The * symbol on Fig. 3b indicates a 15 mag foreground star.
Since the magnitude of the brightest galaxy of this group didn't look too faint, I gave it a try with my 20" Dobsonian on two different recent nights.
At 419x magnification I saw the 15 mag star and the brightest galaxy of the group (the 15.1 mag Seyfert galaxy), which appeared slightly non-stellar. To the north-east of this galaxy there is the 16.0 mag galaxy G2 (designation in the paper). Once in a while something popped up at that position, but it was a difficult observation in spite of its brightness, probably because it is quite close to the two brigher objects.
I was unable to observe any of the fainter objects of this group.
This seems to be pretty much off the beaten path, but at least some of its components aren't extremely faint. So I was wondering if anyone of you knows this object and has observed it? If so, how did you observe the fainter components?
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