Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253)
The Sculptor Galaxy is an intermediate spiral shaped galaxy somewhere between 10 and 14 million light-years away. Similar to the Cigar galaxy, it is a starburst galaxy undergoing a period of intense star formation.
This image was made with a Nikon Z7II and a Nikon 600mm f/6.3 lens. A total of 117 30 second exposures at ISO 6400 were made for a total of about 58.5 minutes of exposure time. Star tracking was with a Fornax LighTrack II. Deep Sky Stacker was used to produce aligned tif files that were then averaged, stretched, and color corrected using Python code. Final image processing was done with Topaz DeNoise AI and some minor adjustments with Capture One.