Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg Bock
Y
Your comment about a dwarf interests me because i was wondering the same thing a few days ago. So, here's a challenge.
Can anyone, with clearer skies than us in SE Queensland, conduct a verrry long exposure campaign at the galaxy to see if there are any traces of a dwarf there?....just thinking out loud...  . |
Agreed, Greg, there could well be a dwarf galaxy there, which was the host galaxy of the supernova......
but, as I mentioned in my last post, there are several other ways for gas and star-formation (and supernovae!!) to occur in the distant outermost parts of a galaxy.
See, for instance, this intriguing study of the galaxy NGC 3108, which shows that a disk of gas and dust and newly-formed stars is gradually coalescing in its outer regions! An analogous process of "the extension of the stellar disk of a spiral galaxy to progressively greater radii" is believed to occur in some spiral galaxies.
http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.3232
Further to your interesting proposal, it is quite possible that super-deep amateur imaging would reveal Extremely Faint optically-luminous outer (stellar) disks in many spiral galaxies and even in many elliptical galaxies!
Best Regards,
Robert