M33 The Pinwheel Galaxy, Paul Winn

M33 The Pinwheel Galaxy

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Description

The Triangulum Galaxy is a spiral galaxy approximately 3 million light years (ly) from Earth in the constellation Triangulum. It is catalogued as Messier 33 or NGC598, and is sometimes informally referred to as the Pinwheel Galaxy, a nickname it shares with Messier 101. The Triangulum Galaxy is the third-largest member of the Local Group of galaxies, which includes the Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy and about 30 other smaller galaxies. It is one of the most distant permanent objects that can be viewed with the naked eye.



With a diameter of about 50,000 light years, the Triangulum galaxy is the third largest member of the Local Group of galaxies. It may be a gravitationally bound companion of the Andromeda Galaxy. (See below.) Triangulum may be home to 40 billion stars, compared to 400 billion for the Milky Way, and 1 trillion (1000 billion) stars for Andromeda.

The disk of Triangulum has an estimated mass of (3-6) × 109 solar masses, while the gas component is about 3.2 × 109 solar masses. Thus the combined mass of all baryonic matter in the galaxy may be 1010 solar masses. The contribution of the dark matter component out to a radius of 55 kly (17 kpc) is equivalent to about 5 × 1010 solar masses.

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M33 The Pinwheel Galaxy, Paul Winn