M33 The Triangulum Galaxy (Steve Leonard)

M33 The Triangulum Galaxy

This image of M33 was shot from a city location (Bortle 8/9) without a light pollution filter, with a total imaging time of less than four hours with a 4.5" refractor telescope.

This galaxy is a close neighbour of ours, being only about 3 million light years away (just a little further away than Andromeda) and will likely collide with the Milky Way along with Andromeda in about 4 billion years. The image shows the many blue-colored star forming regions scattered across the galaxy, as well as several purple nebula. Observations made with the Hubble telescope showed that M33 is forming new stars at ten times the rate in Andromeda galaxy.

The image is the first galaxy that I have shot after moving to a mono setup with LRGB filters. Unlike the case with some of my previous images, I could not rely on narrowband filters to keep light pollution at bay for this broadband target and used software to remove the heavy light pollution gradients that were in the images. I'm hoping that with longer exposure times, I will be able to image some of the fainter galaxies that will be making their appearance in our skies during the coming winter months.

Shot LRGB with 2.7 hrs RGB and 1.1 hrs. Lum.

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
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Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

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