Revision B - Starless Image - original image mouse-over
Revision D - Annotated Image - original image mouse-over

NGC 5906/5907 is an edge-on spiral galaxy [SA(s)c? edge-on]. Its distance is estimated at 34 - 48 million light years. It is also part of a galaxy pair (Holm 704A) with KUG 1513+566 (Holm 704B) - a very much smaller galaxy.

NGC 5907 is known for its tidal streams that were studied in detail by Martinez-Delgado et al. in their 2008 paper. They provide observational and modeling evidence that the streams are fossilized remains of an ancient dwarf galaxy's accretion into NGC 5907. This image captures (vary faintly) some of the streams their paper identified - the "SE loop" (predominant stream in this image - above NGC 5907); half of the "E1" stream (upper right of NGC 5907 - very faint); and about half of the "SW tail" (below NGC 5907). Their study defined a total of eight stream components - I got two and a half.

Needless to say, the dynamic range between the faint tidal streams and the bright NGC 5907 galaxy structure was pretty extreme. So a fair amount of dynamic range manipulation was employed to produce this image so as to show the stream without blowing out the galaxy structure. With my relatively short exposure, I could only get the brightest components of the streams identified in the 2008 paper.

Edit April 4, 2025:
The Annotated image (Revision D) shows loop identifications from the Martinez-Delgado (2008) paper with multiple loop tidal streams. More recent research (Dokkum et al. 2019 - Dragonfly Telephoto Array) and (Lanzetta et al. 2024 - Condor Array) show evidence of a single loop tidal stream rather than multiple loops. My image on this page does show much of what is suggested in the later papers. My annotated image still shows the Martinez-Delgado identifications as these ID's refer to structures also appearing in the later papers.

Also in this image field are numerous background galaxies - one of which is KUG 1516+568 that is also about the same distance as that of NGC 5907 (and the galaxy pair Holm 704). The Revision B starless image shows many of these distant background galaxies (isolated from the MW galaxy stars). There are numerous Quasars as well - all fairly bright (brighter than Mag 20). The furthest is SDSS J151654.46+563748.3 with a light travel time (Lookback) of 11.41 billion years.

Website Pan and Zoom images:
Full Resolution Image
Annotated Image