NGC 253 The Silver Dollar Galaxy in Sculptor in RGB (Ian Parr)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Sculptor (Scl) · Contains: NGC 253 · Sculptor Filament · Silver Coin

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NGC 253 The Silver Dollar Galaxy in Sculptor in RGB

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NGC 253 The Silver Dollar Galaxy in Sculptor in RGB

The Sculptor Galaxy also known as the Silver Coin Galaxy and is located at the center of the Sculptor Group, one of the nearest groups of galaxies to the Milky Way.
It is brightest galaxy in the Sculptor group and is one of the intrinsically brightest galaxies in the vicinity of our Milky Way, only surpassed by the Andromeda Galaxy and the Sombrero Galaxy.
NGC 253's star burst has created several super star clusters on NGC 253's center and star formation appears in the northeast of NGC 253's disk, where a number of red super-giant stars can be found, and in its halo there are young stars as well as some amounts of neutral hydrogen. This, along with other peculiarities found in NGC 253, suggest that a gas-rich dwarf galaxy collided with it 200 million years ago, disturbing its disk and starting the present star burst.

While I wait for the clouds and endless rain to clear I revisited my data from 2022, inspired by a recent APOD from a much larger instrument, to see how much difference improved Pixinsight tools and techniques make compared to my last effort from the same 5 minutes exposures. Certainly colour and detail are now on a different level. Background galaxies are usually my best guide to how gentle the processing has been and I am pretty sure after checking Aladin some very faint background galaxies are beyond 20th magnitude which is quite satisfying for a 5" refractor under a Bortle 4 sky.

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
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Star trails
Northern lights
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Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9248010
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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NGC 253 The Silver Dollar Galaxy in Sculptor in RGB

NGC 253 The Silver Dollar Galaxy in Sculptor in RGB

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NGC 253 The Silver Dollar Galaxy in Sculptor in RGB

NGC 253 The Silver Dollar Galaxy in Sculptor in RGB

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