NGC 300 is a spiral galaxy around 6.07 million light-years away from Earth in the southern constellation of Sculptor. It is about 47 thousand light-years across, but space probe Gemini was able to resolve faint stars 47,000 light-years from the galaxy core, giving the galaxy a diameter of at least 94,000 light-years.



It is one of the closest galaxies to the Local Group, and probably lies between us and the Sculptor Group, a nearby group of 13 galaxies. NGC 300 and the irregular galaxy NGC 55 are only a million or so light-years apart, and probably form a gravitationally bound pair. Until recently, they were considered members of the Sculptor Group, but are now known to be foreground galaxies.



NGC 300 is a relatively diffuse spiral galaxy with a poorly defined core. Young hot blue stars dominate the outer spiral arms of the galaxy, while the older stars congregate in the inner regions. Gases heated by hot young stars and shocks due to winds from massive stars and supernova explosions appear yelowish in this image. The stars in the faint outer regions of NGC 300 are the dying remnants of an ancient stellar population. When the galaxy was young, and the outer regions were still actively forming stars, the outer parts of the galaxy were just as bright as the modern core.



Besides millions of individual stars, clusters of stars and nebulae, NGC 300 also contains a huge cloud of ionized hydrogen (a “HII shell”). This star-forming region measures about 2,000 light-years in diameter, thus dwarfing even the enormous Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud.



On May 23, 2010, the supernova SN 2010da was discovered in NGC 300, northwest of its center.

Some handbook data:

Visual Magnitude 8.1

Angular Size: 19x12 arcmin

Linear Diameter: 47 thousands light-years

Distance 6.7 millions light-years

Position

R.A. 00h 54m 53.3s;

Dec. -37° 41' 03"

Image Details:

Luminance: 18x900sec

Red, blue and green: 12x600sec bin 2x2

Telescope: Skywatcher Esprit 120mm f/7

CCD: ST-8300M

CCD Guiding: Lodestar

Capture and guiding software: MaxIm DL

Mount: EQ-6 Pro

Processing: PixInsight

Bias, Darks and Flats applyed

REV.2

Some cosmetic has been introduced as the increasing the image saturation and a noise clean-up. As a result some more details close to core and on the galaxy's arms have stand out.