This interesting
Astrobin Debut Object, also known as IC 51, is a
polar ring galaxy located 75 million light years away in the constellation of Cetus at a declination of -13 degrees. It spans 1 arc-minute in our apparent view. In his
Arp catalog, Dr. Arp classified this object into the category of Galaxies with Concentric Rings.
This object appears to be the result of a merger between a spiral and an elliptical galaxy. The spiral remnant is the fascinating bright edge-on warped disk, and the elliptical remnant is the vertical halo with faint shell structures. In terms of this combination of an edge-on disk with a halo, this object seems similar to both
Arp 231 and
NGC 5128.
One mystery here is the size of this galaxy. All of the data points to a galaxy diameter of 25,000 light years. I know of no other spiral galaxy or elliptical galaxy, containing this type of structure, which is this small. Both of the similar galaxies linked in the above paragraph are much bigger.
I also find the severe warping of the edge-on disk to be unusual for a galaxy as small as this one.
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