NGC253, The Sculptor Galaxy

This is a Telescope Live dataset from the CHI-1 telescope in Chile.
This dataset is strictly LRGB. I think Ha, given some of the emission characteristics as starburst galaxy, would have added some interesting details to this dataset.

I created two versions (I prefer the first). I had noticed during post processing that star extraction revealed / captured significant star clusters associated with the spiral structure of the galaxy.

My original version was with the star field muted to make the body of the galaxy stand out. On a whim, I decided to enhance the stars a bit rather than hold them back and that became my preferred image. NGC253 has significant dark structures visible, so there is plenty of detail available. However, by enhancing the stars, the "stars" associated with the spiral structure, they become jewelry draped about the body of the galaxy.

I hope you like this, and please Like/comment!

Clayton
CS!!!


From Wikipedia:
The Sculptor Galaxy (also known as the Silver Coin, Silver Dollar Galaxy, NGC 253, or Caldwell 65) is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Sculptor. The Sculptor Galaxy is a starburst galaxy, which means that it is currently undergoing a period of intense star formation. The galaxy was discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1783 during one of her systematic comet searches. About half a century later, John Herschel observed it using his 18-inch metallic mirror reflector at the Cape of Good Hope.

He wrote: "very bright and large (24′ in length); a superb object.... Its light is somewhat streaky, but I see no stars in it except 4 large and one very small one, and these seem not to belong to it, there being many near..."In 1961, Allan Sandage wrote in the Hubble Atlas of Galaxies that the Sculptor Galaxy is "the prototype example of a special subgroup of Sc systems photographic images of galaxies of the group are dominated by the dust pattern. Dust lanes and patches of great complexity are scattered throughout the surface. Spiral arms are often difficult to trace.... The arms are defined as much by the dust as by the spiral pattern."[6]Bernard Y. Mills, working out of Sydney, discovered that the Sculptor Galaxy is also a fairly strong radio source.

The Sculptor Galaxy is located at the center of the Sculptor Group, one of the nearest groups of galaxies to the Milky Way.=10.5px The Sculptor Galaxy (the brightest galaxy in the group and one of the intrinsically brightest galaxies in the vicinity of ours, only surpassed by the Andromeda Galaxy and the Sombrero Galaxy) and the companion galaxies NGC 247, PGC 2881, PGC 2933, Sculptor-dE1, and UGCA 15 form a gravitationally-bound core near the center of the group. Most other galaxies associated with the Sculptor Group are only weakly gravitationally bound to this core.