NGC 5907 (also known as Knife Edge Galaxy or Splinter Galaxy) is a

spiral galaxy Spiral galaxies form a class of galaxy originally described by Edwin Hubble in his 1936 work ''The Realm of the Nebulae''light year A light-year, alternatively spelled light year, is a large unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equivalent to about 9.46 trillion kilometers (), or 5.88 trillion miles ().One trillion here is taken to be 1012 ...

s from

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

. It has an anomalously low

metallicity In astronomy, metallicity is the abundance of elements present in an object that are heavier than hydrogen and helium. Most of the normal physical matter in the Universe is either hydrogen or helium, and astronomers use the word ''"metals"'' as a ...

and few detectable

giant stars A giant star is a star with substantially larger radius and luminosity than a main-sequence (or ''dwarf'') star of the same surface temperature.Giant star, entry in ''Astronomy Encyclopedia'', ed. Patrick Moore, New York: Oxford University Press ...

, being apparently composed almost entirely of

dwarf star A dwarf star is a star of relatively small size and low luminosity. Most main sequence stars are dwarf stars. The meaning of the word "dwarf" was later extended to some star-sized objects that are not stars, and compact stellar remnants which are ...

s. It is a member of the

NGC 5866 Group The NGC 5866 Group is a small group of galaxies located in the constellation Draco. The group is named after NGC 5866, the galaxy with the highest apparent magnitude in the group, although some galaxy group catalogs list NGC 5907 as the brighte ...

. NGC 5907 has long been considered a prototypical example of a warped spiral in relative isolation. In 2006, an international team of astronomers announced the presence of an extended tidal stream surrounding the galaxy that challenges this picture and suggests the gravitational perturbations induced by the stream progenitor may be the cause for the warp. The existence of part of these tidal streams has been recently challenged by some deeper surveys. The galaxy was discovered in 1788 by

William Herschel Frederick William Herschel (; german: Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel; 15 November 1738 – 25 August 1822) was a German-born British astronomer and composer. He frequently collaborated with his younger sister and fellow astronomer Caroline H ...

Supernova A supernova is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. It has the plural form supernovae or supernovas, and is abbreviated SN or SNe. This transient astronomical event occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star or when ...

1940A was in this galaxy. An

ultraluminous X-ray source An ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) is an astronomical source of X-rays that is less luminous than an active galactic nucleus but is more consistently luminous than any known stellar process (over 1039 erg/s, or 1032 watts), assuming that it radiat ...

is located in the galaxy.

Location

:The edge-on galaxy is seen in the constellation Draco, near the star

iota Draconis Iota Draconis (ι Draconis, abbreviated Iota Dra, ι Dra), also named Edasich , is a star in the northern circumpolar constellation of Draco. A visually unremarkable star of apparent magnitude 3.3, in 2002 it was discovered to have a pl ...

. It is seen in the sky near to the much more distant galaxy

NGC 5965 NGC commonly refers to: * New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars, a catalogue of deep sky objects in astronomy NGC may also refer to: Companies * NGC Corporation, name of US electric company Dynegy, Inc. from 1995 to 1998 * Nati ...

NGC Identification

NGC 5907 is also known as NGC 5906. This second NGC number refers to a fainter part of the galaxy lying west of the dust lane that was recorded by astronomer and physicist

George Johnstone Stoney George Johnstone Stoney FRS (15 February 1826 – 5 July 1911) was an Irish people, Irish physicist. He is most famous for introducing the term ''electron'' as the "fundamental unit quantity of electricity". He had introduced the concept, thoug ...

on April 13, 1850.

Gallery

NGC 5907.jpg, NGC 5907, 24 inch telescope on

Mt. Lemmon Mount Lemmon, with a summit elevation of , is the highest point in the Santa Catalina Mountains. It is located in the Coronado National Forest north of Tucson, Arizona, United States. Mount Lemmon was named for botanist Sara Plummer Lemmon, who ...

NGC5907_-_HST_-_Judy_Schmidt.png, Spiral galaxy NGC 5907, by HST.

References

External links

*
Ghost of a Dwarf Galaxy
(Fossils of the Hierarchical Formation of the Nearby Spiral Galaxy NGC 5907)

(2008 June 19 )
Fossils of the Hierarchical Formation of the Nearby Spiral Galaxy NGC5907
(arXiv:0805.1137)

– NGC 5907

Hunting ghosts: the iconic stellar stream(s) around NGC 5907 under scrutiny {{DEFAULTSORT:NGC 5907 5907 Draco (constellation) NGC 5866 Group Astronomical objects discovered in 1788 054470 09801 Unbarred spiral galaxies