NGC-253 is a large, much elongated spiral galaxy located in the southern constellation of Sculptor. If not for its extreme southern declination (-25 degrees) it would be one of the showpiece deep sky objects in the northern sky. It resembles a smaller version of M-31, the Andromeda Galaxy. It is a member of the Sculptor group of galaxies and lies only 11 million light years from Earth. It is 90,000 light years in diameter and contains 100 billion suns. NGC-253 was discovered by Caroline Herschel while she was searching for comets. NGC-253 is dominated by a network of complex dust lanes, and is also undergoing intense star formation.
This image, acquired on September 30, 2017, is a 1 hour integration of 6 minute exposures through the Celestron C-11 at f/2, using the HyperStar III imaging system and the Starlight Express SXVR-H694C color CCD camera, operating at -10 degrees below ambient temperature and binned 1 X 1. Guided, captured and combined using Maxim DL5 Pro. Post processed using PhotoShop CS2, Gradient XTerminator, StarShrink, Carboni's Astro Tools and NoiseWare.