The Deer Lick Group – NGC 7331 and Companions

A fan favorite, the Deer Lick Group is a visually stunning clustering of galaxies in Pegasus with NGC 7331 being the closest and most apparent at 45 million light years away. The rest are 300 million or more light years distant. The smaller galaxies (called the “fleas”), which include NGC 7333, 7335, 7336, 7337, 7338, and 7340 are closer to 300 million light years away.

This collection of galaxies is popularly referred to as the Deer Lick Group—so named by Tomm Lorenzin when he had an especially good view of these galaxies one night at Deer Lick Gap in North Carolina near the Blue Ridge Parkway.

NGC 7331 is considered to be a close match to our Milky Way galaxy. But there are some significant differences. Our galaxy contains a central bar—a roughly rectangular swath of densely packed stars—where NGC 7331 does not. Also, unlike in our galaxy, the central bulge of NGC 7331 is rotating in the opposite direction to the rest of the stars in the galaxy—a rather odd occurrence.