The Triangulum Galaxy (M33)
Image Details:
M33 is a smaller spiral galaxy about 3 million light-years distant. In comparison to our own galaxy, which is about 100,000 light years across and contains at most 400 billion stars, M33 is only ~60,000 light years wide and contains up to 40 billion stars. It also appears to lack a central supermassive black hole which is unusual, as most large galaxies will have one (to clarify, it does have a large black hole near galactic center, it is simply much smaller in mass than expected). While the Andromeda Galaxy appear almost edge-on to us, M33 is only angled about 55 degrees and much more of its spiral structure can be seen, though it is much more subtle. This does make its star-forming regions (appearing as the brighter pink and blue spots among the spiral arms) more apparent, and many of these are bright enough that they are designated as separate objects in the NGC (New General Catalogue) list (see below).
This image, while noisier than most of my recent work, was captured using a relatively lower-tech platform composed of spare equipment and is much higher in focal length than my typical shots. The field of view of this image covers around the same area of sky as the Full Moon, while most of the other shots on my Deep Sky page could easily fit 8 times that or much more.
Equipment:
Celestron C8 SCT (calculated 1118mm Focal Length) using F/6.3 Reducer
Canon T3i (Astromodified)
Hypertuned Celestron CGEM-II
Exposures:
One-Shot Color: 100 x 120” (Total: 3h, 20m)
Misc Details:
Processing Software: PixInsight
Taken from: Wichita, KS, Bortle 5
Capture Dates: 14 January, 2024