Hi Lacertillian,
If I can nab it with ease in my 10" thru light pollution, you will have no problem. It's very large & takes up a good chunk of space on my 10mm 65 degree widefield eyepiece. So I'm wondering.... are you observing it with the 10mm eyepiece that came with the scope? If you are, perhaps you're seeing thru it as the field of view of those plossls are quite small with high magnification such as the 10mm. I would suggest using the 25mm.
It is easily affected by the sky conditions. Sometimes I've seen it as a very thin faint streak and other times a nice long elongated oval.
Try going for NGC 55, also part of the Sculptor Group of galaxies; it's quite brightish, and of good size in the eyepiece.
Also, M77 is dead easy, sitting within a degree of delta Ceti. It's a pretty face on spiral with a very bright core. Depending on the seeing conditions will reveal more or less detail, so this is one of the galaxies truly worth re-visiting regularly IMO.
To locate NGC 253:
Use the brightest star in Cetus, Deneb Kaitos as your launch pad.
It is a yellow star.
To gauge the approx. location, make a fist held out at arms length with one eye closed- that's roughly 10 degrees- at Denebo Kaitos.
The galaxy sits 7 degrees away from Deneb Kaitos.
From Deneb Kaitos move the scope until you come to a group of 3 bright mag. 5 stars in the shape of a triangle. Keep moving slowly along that same line- the galaxy sits only about 2 degrees next to those stars.
The stars will be visible in the finder or binos.
Bearing in mind, if you have a newtonian, the image thru the scope will be different to that of the finder- upside down and inverted.
The attached star hop is for 9.30pm, 5th October.
A useful forum thread to read:
Easiest Galaxy To View?
And
here is a link for the brightest galaxies to view.
A tip: Try and observe galaxies above 40 degrees. Below that, they tend to loose detail due to the murky lower atmosphere. The screen grab I've supplied above is at a nice 60 degree height- perfect. Zenith viewing with a dob is very difficult as you may have found out.
Another tip: Learn where the
26 brightest stars are in our sky over the coming seasons. These are a good guide to finding objects and the constellations they belong to.