This is a perenial favourite and like many others, I have also hit it a few times over the years too
Of course, not under the much-improved conditions of my new observatory (see comparison with my last effort below)
Conditions in Spring are often windy in this region and this year has been no exception and commensurate with this, the seeing hasn't been the usual sharpness previously enjoyed at Eagleview and for the two nights of this capture, the average FWHM, as measured by MaximDL, of most subs hovered around 2.1" with a few up at 2.4" and several at 2.0" unfortunately the best Lum subs only had an average FWHM of 2.0"
..this is however still as good or better than the handful of the very best nights I experienced over eight years at my previous observatory!..so while I was a little dissapointed, I'll take it
Never the less, some decent details have been revealed and I was particularly happy with the detail in the back ground galaxies too. One of the challenges in a good image of NGC 253, is to be able to capture and reveal the very faint outer halo that envelopes the galaxy and given the dark skies over my observatory I was able to acheive this and show it in a natural colour image!...happy with this....sigh, juuuust wish it had been one of the several FWHM nights of 1.5" I've had and the telescope wasn't buffeted by wind gusts
...oh well, can't win'em all...
OK hope you like it and as usual, all images are best viewed on a proper computer monitor in a dimly lit room
NGC 253 Close up viewed on Pbase
NGC 253 Close up viewed on Flickr
Faint outer stellar halo
Lastly...and even without Eagleview's best conditions, compare to my
last shot of this galaxy from my previous observatory at Wallaroo in 2018, all be it a quickie at low altitude...all the same imaging gear...but no comparison!
Mike