Comparison of some ICs obtained in our minor merger experiments (first and third columns in the figure) to real observational examples with similar morphologies (second and fourth columns, respectively). The surface density maps of the ICs generated in our models are taken from Figs. 4, 5 and are in simulation units (consult captions there). The observational examples are taken from the sample of spiral galaxies with ICs developed by Erwin & Sparke (2003). Coloured maps of real galaxies correspond to B − R or V − I colour maps of these galaxies, while their grey-scale maps represent unsharp masks in V, R or H bands (see Erwin & Sparke 2003 for a detailed description of each frame). The global inclination of galaxy in the observational cases and the spatial scale of each postage stamp are indicated in each frame. In images of real galaxies, north is up and east is left, except in NGC 4665, which has been rotated 90° clockwise to emphasize the similarity with the IC resulting in experiment M6PsRb (model b). For a comparison of the scaled sizes of the ICs resulting in our models with those exhibited by real ICs, consult Sect. 4. Material from Erwin & Sparke (2003) in this figure is reproduced by permission of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) and of the original authors.