Today a paper was published by Dr. David Delgado-Martinez that describes the discovery of a rare blue stellar stream around NGC 7241. It is the faint glow (see the paper) to the upper left of the galaxy and likely originated from the foreground dwarf galaxy that is superimposed on NGC 7241 (also kind of a rare thing!).
https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.07029These kinds of projects require deep imagery to improve understanding of a provisional feature such as this- and later observe them with larger telescopes using spectroscopy to understand their nature. I am fortunate to have been in this first part of this chain by taking the deep image (and I am named on the paper as an "author" for my contribution).
This is likely one of the lowest mass streams outside of the Local Group. Detecting more objects like this can help constrain models of dark matter in the halos of (spiral) galaxies and improve our understanding of the evolution of the Universe.
In addition to the stream... that superimposed dwarf galaxy with its starburst activity is unique- at least for all that galaxies I have visited (quite a few!).
If you like this kind of stuff... please follow me here and also on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/c/adamblockThanks,
Adam
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