His Flocculence- the Fluffy NGC 3521

[Warhen]

Hi mates, hope you enjoy-

http://billionsandbillions.com/ngc_3521.html

[Placidus]

Excellent.

A puzzle to me is that a typical spiral has about 1% of its stellar mass in the halo, and say 9% of its stellar mass in the nuclear bulge. Since it's easy to photograph the bulge, you'd think we'd have some faint hope of seeing the halo, but we don't. I suppose it's because that 1% is spread out over such a large volume. If I've understood you correctly, here we're not looking at a bright halo, but rather at freshly cannibalized tidal tails which are extra-bright because of freshly triggered star formation.