NGC253 – The Sculptor Galaxy

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This image is 2 hours of Luminance @1X1, 1 hour each of red and green with almost 2 hours of Blue all 2X2. I shot blue quite a bit longer because the object is so low (barely over 2 atms)! There is differential extinction of the blue that low so I ramped it. The final LRGB image definitely needs more time but does show some detail, surrounding galaxies and globulars. The galaxy fits comfortably on my CCD chip as you can see from the attached Sky chart. That night was very cold and it was easy to reach -25C in the camera. You can see how I used a flats box  This is especially important for extended objects like NGC253 where a flatly-illuminated field is critical.