Caldwell 48

Caldwell 48 (NGC 2775) is a spiral galaxy in Cancer about 67 million light years away. It turns a spiral galaxy without a central bar and is a flocculent galaxy. Flocculent galaxies don’t have distinct spiral arms, at least in visible light. What makes this really unusual is a rink structure surrounding the galaxy. According to Wikipedia, it is thought to be caused by interactions with a dwarf satellite galaxy. That faint outer ring is a bit hard to see so here’s an inverted version of the image that shows it more clearly:

The inverted version also is starless so the things remaining are even more distant galaxies.

For all the technical details, see astrobin.

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