(See description below)
NGC 5907 with Tidal Stream
This image shows outstanding detail of an extended stellar tidal
stream wrapping
around NGC 5907, an edge-on, spiral galaxy. The deep image reveals for the first
time a large- scale complex of arcing loops—an excellent example of how a
low-mass satellite accretion can produce a interweaved, rosette-like structure
of debris dispersed in the halo of its host galaxy. The existence of this
structure, which has probably survived for several billion years, confirms that
halos of spiral galaxies in the Local Universe still contain a significant
number of galactic fossils from their hierarchical formation.
Until now, NGC 5907 has been considered a prototypical example of a warped
spiral in relative isolation. The presence of an extended tidal stream
challenges this picture and suggests that the gravitational perturbations
induced by the stream progenitor may be the cause for the warp. This detection
of an old, complex tidal stream in a nearby galaxy with rather modest
instrumentation points to the viability of surveys to find extragalactic tidal
substructures around spiral galaxies in the Local Volume (< 15 Mpc) with the
prospect of obtaining a census with enough statistical significance to be
compared with cosmological simulations.