NGC 253 (Kirby Collins)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Sculptor (Scl) · Contains: HD4389 · HD4414 · HD4555 · HD4572 · HD4631 · HD4749 · NGC 253 · Sculptor Filament · Sculptor galaxy · Silver Coin

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NGC 253

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NGC 253

At just 10 million light years away, NGC 253 in Sculptor is one of the brighter spiral galaxies visible from Earth. Discovered in 1783 by Caroline Herschel, it is notable for its many clumps and tendrils of dust and high rate of star formation. Allen Sandage described it as "the prototype example of a special subgroup of Sc systems...photographic images of galaxies of the group are dominated by the dust pattern. Dust lanes and patches of great complexity are scattered throughout the surface. Spiral arms are often difficult to trace...The arms are defined as much by the dust as by the spiral pattern." [quote from Burnham]

NGC 253 is the brightest member of the Sculptor Group, a group of 14 galaxies that are the closest cluster of galaxies outside our own local group. NGC 253 is the largest and brightest member of the group as viewed from Earth, at magnitude 7 and with a diameter of 25 arc-minutes (a bit smaller than the full Moon). With its bright disk and mottled appearance, NGC 253 has been dubbed the "Silver Coin Galaxy."

Although it is large and bright, NGC 253 sits at a declination of -25 degrees, and stays fairly low in the sky from my latitude. To capture it I set the telescope up in the front yard and collected 80x60 seconds each of RGB over the course of two nights. This also represents my first attempt at imaging unguided with the Mach 2.

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	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
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
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	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6871782
PixInsight job	0QEZEZTBQDD2VA1O19KTSCVJKS0M2259
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	00h47m34s.30
RA (top/left)	00h49m52s.90
RA (top/right)	00h49m34s.15
RA (bottom/right)	00h45m17s.43
RA (bottom/left)	00h45m32s.81

Dec (center)	-25°17′02″.9
Dec (top/left)	-25°52′17″.10
Dec (top/right)	-24°38′42″.5
Dec (bottom/right)	-24°41′42″.3
Dec (bottom/left)	-25°55′19″.6

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NGC 253

NGC 253

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NGC 253

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