The curious case of NGC 5068 and its neutral hydrogen fingers

How galaxies replenish their gas supply in order to sustain star formation, is a research topic of many of the new and upcoming neutral atomic hydrogen (HI) surveys on the SKA precursor instruments. This replenishment, or accretion, of gas in the form of HI is likely to occur at column densities one or two orders of magnitude below previous observational limits and it has, so far, not been unambiguously detected. We present recent deep HI observations of NGC 5068, an isolated nearby star-forming galaxy observed by MeerKAT as part of the MHONGOOSE survey. This survey is the deepest HI survey of nearby galaxies until the advent of the SKA and is reaching column densities of resolution. The combination of the resolution and sensitivity of the MeerKAT HI data have revealed "fingers" of low column density gas extending out from the main HI disk of the galaxy. While the origin of these fingers remains a mystery for now, the dynamics of the main galaxy disk and the outer disk in which the fingers are located, as well as the morphology of the fingers, does not seem to suggest a previous merger event.