Overlapping?
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by
Darnitol
At first I thought this image showed polar tidal debris, but I'm questioning that. To me it looks like there's a second galaxy behind the central one. The second galaxy appears to be rotated almost exactly 90 degrees. It appears to be slightly offset, such that the center of the "hidden" galaxy would be slightly to the lower right of the front galaxy. I could be wrong here, but do take a look at the edges of the galaxy where the appearance of overlapping is greatest.
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ElisabethB
moderator
The 'background' galaxy would have to be extremely tenuous. I'm still going for tidal debris.
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Darnitol
I'm asking here to educate myself, not to question your conclusion: what about it makes it seem like tidal debris to you? My main reason for asking is that I feel like I'm seeing a distinct edge to the brightness both above and below the primary galaxy, and what I'm perceiving as the "rear" galaxy seems neatly oval.
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by
JeanTate
in response to Darnitol's comment.
What we see is a JPG image, which is the end result of processing data which has a far larger dynamic range than a JPG (256 intensity levels, per color, right?).
Have you considered getting hold of files which contain the data with the full, original dynamic range (they'd very likely be in the FITS format)? With that data you could do your own image processing, and perhaps bring out better the features you see.
Just a suggestion. Happy hunting! 😃
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