NGC 253 is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Sculptor. Also known as the Sculptor Galaxy, it is a starburst galaxy, which means that it is currently undergoing a period of intense star formation. You can see many red parts in the galaxy, they are large nebula (like Lagoon Nebula in our galaxy) where new stars are being made and even the yellower parts of the galaxy are active. The galaxy is about 11 million light years away and is in on of our neighbor galaxy clusters.

This is a larger galaxy so I took 2 separate image and created a 2 panel mosaic out of it.

Each of the 2 images was shot for 19 images of 10 minutes each for Luminance and then 9 images of 5 minutes of each of the 3 colors. Total imaging of 5.5 hours for each image.

 

Below is the version I took a few years back.

The brighter red nubulae showing in the galaxy have been exaggerated by using Ha (Hydrogen Alpha) filter.

I took this image over 7.5 hours (15 luminances of 20 minutes each and 5 each images of RGB colors @ 10 minutes).