Had a couple of rare clear Moonless nights last week and imaged NGC 253 Sculptor Galaxy ( Silver Coin or Silver Dollar Galaxy ) under my heavy light polluted city suburban skies. Discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1783 , this spiral galaxy is approximately 11.42 million light years from Earth and a brightness of 8.1 magnitude. Its a popular southern hemisphere target during our Winter.

Location : Sydney , Australia ( Backyard )
No Moon
Sky : Bortle 8
Conditions : Average seeing ( some fine smoke haze as authorities are carrying out back burning operations 40km to the west for hazard reduction ) 
Telescope : 8" f5 Klaus Helmerich Carbon Fibre Newtonian 
Mount : Skywatcher EQ6-R Pro 
Imaging Camera : ZWO2600MC coooled to -10C , Gain 100.
No Filters ( just internal protective UV/IR cut window )
Guide Scope: Orion 60mm with Helical focuser 
Guide Camera : ZWO120MM  Gain 65 
210 x 60 sec subs ( dithered every 3rd sub ) over 2 nights 
40 x Flats
60 x Bias 
Tracking and Goto : EQMOD and Stellarium
Capture Software : APT
Guiding : PHD2 Multistar Guiding ( 0.50 to 0.60 arc sec total )
Stacking Software : Deep Sky Stacker 
Post Processing : Startools V1.8 Linear Data Set 

I accidently changed the orientation of my camera between night sessions as I'm in the process of testing and setting up my new Mono rig ( 2600MM ) Unfortunately both nights had a different sensor orientation which resulted in a stacked file losing nearly a 1/4 of the field. Subsequently I had to crop away the anomaly which resulted in a much smaller pixel value. I still managed to achieve some reasonable resolution with a cropped image. Startools SV Decon didn't work as well as I expected either due to reduced pixels and there are two or three tiny some blotchy artifacts near the galaxy halo. We all make mistakes at times buts it is frustrating as clear moonless nights don't come around that often. Still pleased with the final image just the same.

Thanks for Looking
Comments welcome