Spiral galaxy NGC 253

This photo shows a sky field around the Spiral Galaxy NGC 253 (Type Sc) seen nearly edge-on. It is located in the southern constellation Sculptor at a distance of about 8 million light-years. The image is the sum of five 5-min exposures through a blue (B-band) optical filtre. They were slightly offset with respect to each other so that the small gaps between the eight CCD''''s of the mosaic are no longer visible. This image also shows the faint trails of 2 artificial satellites. Many of the quite numerous and small, slightly fuzzy objects are undoubtedly globular clusters of NGC 253. The image processing consisted of de-biassing, flat-fielding, and removal (by interpolation) of some bad columns. The full-width-half-maximum (FWHM) of stellar images is about 1.0 arcsec. It was rebinned (2x2) to 4kx4k size and sampling 0.48 arcsec/pixel.North is up and East is left.

Credit:

ESO

About the Image

Id:eso9903a
Type:Observation
Release date:15 January 1999
Related releases:eso9903
Size:4000 x 3917 px

About the Object

Name:NGC 253
Type:Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Spiral
Distance:11 million light years
Constellation:Sculptor
Category:Galaxies

Image Formats

Large JPEG
1.8 MB
Screensize JPEG
84.9 KB

Zoomable


Wallpapers

1024x768
90.9 KB
1280x1024
140.7 KB
1600x1200
204.2 KB
1920x1200
260.0 KB
2048x1536
333.3 KB

Coordinates

Position (RA):0 47 42.16
Position (Dec):-25° 15' 32.86"
Field of view:31.95 x 31.28 arcminutes
Orientation:North is 1.6° right of vertical

Colours & filters

BandTelescope
Optical
B
MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope
WFI