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The way that some of the dust lanes point in the "wrong" direction is shown well in your image, Allan. They point "upwards" from the plane of this galaxy, rather than along it. In other words, they are exiting from the principal plane of NGC 253. For some time, I thought that this was some type of artefact of the way that amateurs process their images, but it is well shown in diverse images processed in different ways.
This is normally the sign of a very actively star forming disk galaxy, in which dust chimneys and streamers are pushed outwards due to energy being put into the ISM by multiple OB stars, supernovae, etc.
Malin, in a study of his unsharp masked images of NGC 253, referred to the "boiling, steaming" interstellar medium of this galaxy.
While there is not a lot of evidence for strong star formation in the large-scale disk and spiral arms of this galaxy, when we look at NGC 253 in infrared imagery, the central burst of star formation (completely hidden in the optical regime), with its gigantic number of OB stars, virtually dominates the light of the entire galaxy!
Last edited by madbadgalaxyman; 02-10-2011 at 04:37 PM.
Reason: more info
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