Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Triangulum (Tri)  ·  Contains:  HD9483  ·  IC 131  ·  IC 132  ·  IC 133  ·  IC 135  ·  IC 136  ·  IC 137  ·  IC 142  ·  IC 143  ·  M 33  ·  NGC 588  ·  NGC 592  ·  NGC 595  ·  NGC 598  ·  NGC 604  ·  Triangulum Galaxy  ·  Triangulum Pinwheel
M33 Triangulum Galaxy, Jeff Weiss
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M33 Triangulum Galaxy

M33 Triangulum Galaxy, Jeff Weiss
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M33 Triangulum Galaxy

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Description

M33, Triangulum Galaxy, is a beautiful large near-face-on spiral galaxy (54 deg tilt) located in the constellation of Triangulum. With a diameter of about 60,000 light-years, the Triangulum galaxy is the third largest member of the Local Group of galaxies, roughly 60% the size of the Milky Way. It may be a gravitationally bound companion of the Andromeda Galaxy, as it is heading toward that galaxy. At 2.9 MLY distance, Triangulum has 40 billion stars, compared to 400 billion for the Milky Way, and 1 trillion stars for Andromeda Galaxy (other members of the Local Group). The M33 nucleus does not appear to contain a supermassive black hole with an upper limit of 3,000 solar masses based on the motion of stars in its core. Its dark matter component is estimated to be 5x its baryonic matter component. [based on Wikipedia]

M33 was one of the original SA-type galaxies (after M31) whose flattening gravitational rotation curves (velocity vs. radius) were measured using the velocities of its multiple HII regions by V. Rubin and WK Ford (~1970) at Mt. Palomar. This was eventually interpreted (P.Peebles and J. Ostriker, 1973) as due to halos of dark matter surrounding the galaxies of roughly 5x the galaxies' visible matter.

This 13.5h LRGB image uses DeepSkyWest (NM) data collected between 10/20/20 and 12/8/20. North is to the Right.

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M33 Triangulum Galaxy, Jeff Weiss