Astronomy Picture of the Day - NGC 253: Dusty Island Universe

NASA ^ | 15 Feb, 2024 | Image Credit & Copyright: Steve Crouch

[MtnClimber]

Explanation: Shiny NGC 253 is one of the brightest spiral galaxies visible, and also one of the dustiest. Some call it the Silver Coin Galaxy for its appearance in small telescopes, or just the Sculptor Galaxy for its location within the boundaries of the southern constellation Sculptor. Discovered in 1783 by mathematician and astronomer Caroline Herschel, the dusty island universe lies a mere 10 million light-years away. About 70 thousand light-years across, NGC 253 is the largest member of the Sculptor Group of Galaxies, the nearest to our own Local Group of Galaxies. In addition to its spiral dust lanes, tendrils of dust seem to be rising from its galactic disk laced with young star clusters and star forming regions in this colorful galaxy portrait. The high dust content accompanies frantic star formation, earning NGC 253 the designation of a starburst galaxy. NGC 253 is also known to be a strong source of high-energy x-rays and gamma rays, likely due to massive black holes near the galaxy's center.

[MtnClimber]

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For more detail go to the link and click on the image for a high definition image. You can then move the magnifying glass cursor then click to zoom in and click again to zoom out. When zoomed in you can scan by moving the side bars on the bottom and right side of the image.

[MtnClimber]

[MtnClimber]

Pinging the APOD list.

🪐 🌟 🌌 🍔

[Fungi]

Nehemiah 9:6
New International Version
6 You alone are the LORD. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship you.

[dragnet2]

This is my shot of NGC 253. The distance to NGC253 is about 11 million light years. This shot was a series of 184 exposures at 45 seconds each, combined into a single image seen below.

184x45s, iso1600

[No name given]

Wow.

[No name given]

Cool.

[No name given]

Amen 🙏🏻!!!!

[MtnClimber]

Nice photo!

[Larry Lucido]

[blueunicorn6]

A Blue Plate Special Cheeseburger.

[algore]

There is probably an AI you could feed all of them into and get a much sharper image, and change the brightness into a log curve.

If there is/are not yet, I know lots of the AI people.

Probably they should delete known manmade objects as well

[dragnet2]

There are all types of programs to process images. I prefer doing things myself, using least amount of processing as possible. Many images I see today, in my opinion, are over processed and manipulated. Btw, that image is over sharp causing some stars to bloat. But what is great, I can again go back anytime and reprocess the data. Which I usually do anyway. After taking the image and looking at the results, I found issues with what is called period error correction (PEC) imperfections in the tracking worm gears which I since have adjusted. Correcting that issue has resulted in clearer images, longer exposure times etc.

Btw, the scope is over 24 years old and was never specifically made for deep space imaging due to the dated mount/drive system, electronics etc. But I like making what I have work as close to it's max performance abilities as possible. It's demon I have.

[dragnet2]

And the iso to too high...lol

[dragnet2]