Detail of 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 CCDs of the mosaic are no longer visible. This image also shows the faint trails of 2 artificial satellites. It contains some fainter and smaller background galaxies. 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 is a subimage of another image, but at the full original sampling of 0.24 arcsec/pixel. It covers about 2kx2k, or about 1/16 of the full field. North is up and East is left.

Credit:

ESO

About the Image

Id:eso9903b
Type:Observation
Release date:15 January 1999
Related releases:eso9903
Size:2200 x 2196 px

About the Object

Name:NGC 253
Type:Local Universe : Galaxy : Type : Spiral
Distance:10 million light years
Constellation:Sculptor
Category:Galaxies

Image Formats

Large JPEG
1.1 MB
Screensize JPEG
222.2 KB

Wallpapers

1024x768
218.3 KB
1280x1024
350.9 KB
1600x1200
511.7 KB
1920x1200
614.7 KB
2048x1536
830.6 KB

Coordinates

Position (RA):0 47 55.07
Position (Dec):-25° 11' 34.26"
Field of view:8.70 x 8.69 arcminutes
Orientation:North is 1.6° right of vertical

Colours & filters

BandWavelengthTelescope
Optical
B
451 nmMPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope
WFI

Exposure time: 1500s