[4][5] About half a century later, John Herschel observed it using his 18-inch metallic mirror reflector at the Cape of Good Hope.

Mills, working out of Sydney, discovered that the Sculptor Galaxy is also a fairly strong radio source.

[8] In 400 mm scopes and larger, a dark dust lane northwest of the nucleus is visible, and over a dozen faint stars can be seen superimposed on the bulge.

[14] The super star clusters are arranged in an ellipse around the center of NGC 253, which from the Earth's perspective appears as a flat line.

This, along with other peculiarities found in NGC 253, suggest that a gas-rich dwarf galaxy collided with it 200 million years ago, disturbing its disk and starting the present starburst.

[20] Research suggests the presence of a supermassive black hole in the center of this galaxy with a mass estimated to be 5 million times that of the Sun, which is slightly heavier than Sagittarius A*.

Using the planetary nebula luminosity function method, an estimate of 10.89 +0.85−1.24 million light years (or Mly; 3.34 +0.26−0.38 Megaparsecs, or Mpc) was achieved in 2005.

[2] An international team of researchers has used the Subaru Telescope to identify a faint dwarf galaxy disrupted by NGC 253.