NGC 55: Survivor of Recent Trauma?

OTA: CDK24
Camera: Moravian 61000Pro
Observatory: Heaven's Mirror
Date of Capture: Oct '23
Date of Processing: Feb '24

Exposures Used:
R: 21 x 900 sec
G: 23 x  "
B: 18 x  "
L: 22 x  "
H: 8 x 900 sec
Total Exposure time: 23 hours
Image Width: 31.3 arc-minutes

Processing Tools:
1.    Commercial: PixInsight, Topaz, Photo Director 365, Luminar Neo
2.    Pixinsight Addons: NoiseXTerminator, BlurXTerminator, StarXTerminator, GraXpert
3.    My Scripts: NB_Assistant, AC_Restar, Subframe Weighting Tool (Excel w/ J. Hunt), ColorTweaker, StarTweaker

Target Description:
Seen nearly edge-on, NGC 55 is classified as an irregular galaxy… that lacks well-defined spiral arms or other common galactic structures. In this image, faint bulges occur on both sides of the disk. Images based on more Ha data show structures in these bulges that indicate outward streaming material. Such structures indicate massive star-burst activity within the disk. In turn, massive star-burst activity (and an irregular internal structure) indicate some type of encounter with another galaxy, even, perhaps, the devouring of said galaxy!

Notice the small, abundant "stars" visible in parts of the galaxy, especially at the outer edges of the galaxy, best visible left and right  extremes? Given that a single pixel spans more than 1.4E13 km and the largest stars are about 1.4E9, (and the things in the image are round...meaning they are more than 1 pixel in size,) it is unlikely that these are stars. I would guess they are either young globular clusters (yes, there are such things) or maybe clusters of new stars resulting from the star bursts. Any opinions?

Processing Description:
To a significant degree, the desire to show detail in NGC 55's clouds was thwarted by intervening stars and clouds…not in the Milky Way, but in NGC 55 itself. When the stars were removed for post-processing, many stars, or what appeared as stars, were removed from the galaxy along with the stars from the Milky Way. I carefully made their presence apparent when returning these "foreign" stars to the image.

Target Statistics:
Distance: 8M ly
Apparent Magnitude: 47.5
Pixel Span at Target: 1.4E13 km

Alex Woronow