Silver Coin Galaxy

NGC253, a.k.a. the Silver Coin Galaxy, one of the largest and brightest galaxies in the night sky. Located some 11.4 million light years away from our planet (3...
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NGC253, a.k.a. the Silver Coin Galaxy, one of the largest and brightest galaxies in the night sky. Located some 11.4 million light years away from our planet (3.5Mpc), the Silver Coin is part of a small group of galaxies known as the Sculptor Group, one of the closest groups nearby our own Local Group.
The galaxy is an intermediate type spiral galaxy ( SAB(s)c ) some 90000 light years across, or about half the size of our own Milky Way. Unlike the Milky Way, though, NGC253 is undergoing what is called a starburst, where star formation is occurring at an accelerated rate. Near the galaxy's core, several large ultra-large open star clusters have formed. One of them weighing around 1.5x10^6 solar masses and shining at around -15mag. Some that were found to be heavily obscured by dust in the core have been found to be even larger and brighter. As well as these cluster, large numbers of supernovae remnants, many Wolf-Rayet stars and Red Supergiants have produced a galactic "superwind" which is, paradoxically, inhibiting star formation elsewhere in the galaxy. This is because the superwind blows away all the star forming gas and dust out of the galaxy.
NGC253 is also home to a supermassive black hole in the core of the galaxy. This hole has been weighed in at around 5 million solar masses, around about the same size (if not a little larger) than our own galaxy's central SMBH.
Pic taken with t31 (iTelescope, SSO), 2hrs of subs, LRGB, 6 subs x 5mins-sub, each channel.
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