Sculptor Galaxy

One of the most impressive and pretty galaxies, the Sculptor Galaxy, NGC253, in the constellation Sculptor. It is about 11 million lightyears away and has a diameter of about 90 000 lightyears. It is a spiral galaxy, although the spiral arm are not obvious because of the prominent dark nebulae scattered throughout the disk. Although it is one of the brightest galaxies in the sky, it is not as famous as, e.g., the Andromeda Galaxy… probably because it is difficult to see from northern latitudes.

This is a classical LRGB image with a total of 6 hours of exposure time, taken with our Planewave CDK17 at the TURMX observatory. Most of the exposure time was used for the L (luminance) channel to get most detail in post-processing. The colors should me rather realistic. Definitely check out the full-screen view by clicking on the image.