“Is this a dagger I see before me?” Maybe; if so, when do I post this image? Alas, there is no calendar date readily associated with
MacBeth. So instead I meant to post this image on the Ides of March, as the galaxy reminds me of the daggers in the
Eid Mar coin, famously minted by Brutus as a macabre commemoration of his role in the assassination of Julius Caesar.
Although seen almost edge-on, it’s still apparent that morphologically this galaxy has a confused structure, somewhat like our satellite Small and Large Magellanic Cloud galaxies. NGC 55 has a single spiral arm and, while not wholly irregular, it likely was deformed from an original stately spiral shape by gravitational influence from, or collisions with, neighboring or satellite galaxies.
Although NGC 55 and its gravitationally bound galactic companion NGC 300 appear to be part of the Sculptor group of galaxies,
studies have shown that they are in fact in the foreground of that group.
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