NGC 5907
NGC5907 is an edge-on spiral galaxy. In 1998 Shang et al. discovered that the galaxy has a large tidal stream. In 2008 Martinez-Delgado et al. found that the stream wraps twice around the galaxy, in a spectacular cork-crew like pattern. In a 2019 paper we presented imaging of this galaxy with the Dragonfly telescope. Here we provide fits files of the Dragonfly data, a fits file of a deep amateur image, and a movie showing all published imaging of NGC5907 over the past 20 years.
Fits files of the Dragonfly data that were used in the paper
The NGC5907 observations are part of the edge-on galaxy survey of Colleen Gilhuly et al, in prep. This survey is ongoing, and the final images that will be released by Colleen will likely be updated versions of the ones provided below. We are releasing these versions now as they are the ones that are used in the NGC5907 paper.
Entire g band Dragonfly image [gzipped fits file; 167 Mb]
Entire r band Dragonfly image [gzipped fits file; 167 Mb]
MRF-filtered g band Dragonfly image, area around NGC5907 [gzipped fits file; 6 Mb]
MRF-filtered r band Dragonfly image, area around NGC5907 [gzipped fits file; 6 Mb]
MRF model that was subtracted from the g band image [gzipped fits file; 7.5 Mb]
MRF model that was subtracted from the r band image [gzipped fits file; 7.5 Mb]
Movie of 20 years of published images of NGC5907
Below we provide a movie of all images of NGC5907 that have been published over the past 20 years or (in the case of the BASS data) are in the public domain in the form of fits files.
Fits file of amateur luminance image
The deepest amateur data besides those presented in Martinez-Delgado et al were obtained in a 4hr integration through a luminance filter with a 0.6m telescope at Skinakas Observatory (Crete), by Stefan Binnewies and Josef Pöpsel. Their processed image was made available on a website in 2008, and (as shown in the top left panel below) it appears to confirm the remarkable double loop structure. In the interest of helping to understand the differences between the various datasets, Stefan and Josef kindly made their original, unprocessed stacked luminance file available. This is shown in the bottom panel. Stefan explained that the "donut" on the left and the stripes had to be removed manually in Photoshop. Because of these artifacts the image is difficult to interpret.
We created empirical corrections, assuming that the "donut" is symmetric and is a multiplicative feature (the data were not flat fielded, which makes this very likely). These are shown in the bottom right. The corrected image is at top right. This is not a definitive reconstruction; that would require an actual flat field image. Stefan and Josef gave permission to provide the fits file of their luminance image so interested readers can inspect it for themselves:
Luminance filter observation of NGC5907 by Binnewies and Pöpsel [gzipped fits file; 33 Mb]