This is an image of NGC5907, also known as the Splinter Galaxy or the Knife-Edge Galaxy, with a nice spiral galaxy up in the corner of the frame, NGC5905.
NGC5907 is an isolated galaxy, yet is somewhat asymmetric, puzzling the astronomy community. Some recent studies have shown streams of matter that may explain the odd shape. It is approximately 50 million light-years from the Earth and has an apparent size of roughly 12 arcminutes on the longest side. It is found in the constellation Draco (the Dragon).
NGC5907 is a galaxy comprised of almost all dim dwarf stars with very low metallicity. This means that the stars are likely quite old and did not incorporate the metals that result from older stars that had exploded. A supernova was observed in this galaxy in 1940: this type of event would introduce metals into the galactic environment. The supernova would also have been born recently, given that such massive stars have short lifespans.
NGC5905 is rather small as seen from Earth and is therefore difficult to image (diameter roughly 3 arcminutes). Nevertheless the cropped image below shows a well formed spiral galaxy that is nearly face-on to us.
Crop showing NGC5907
Crop showing NGC5905
This image was captured at Lac Teeples on May 2022. It results from stacking more than 2 hours of one-minute subframes. The telescope was the RASA11, with the 6200 camera.
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