I ventured out to the farm to fine-tune my rig, with my newly acquired NEQ6 as well as my trusty 60D, now with the stock filter replaced with a custom UV/IR cut, hopefully allowing a wider spectral sample.
This place is great, its our farm which is now harvested, so the area to venture into is quite large, and the skies are relatively open.
M33 is a new target for me - as much as it is old hat for everyone else here.
At 2.9 mly distance, M33's angular diameter corresponds to about 50,000 light-years - about half the size of the Milky Way. M 33 is estimated to contain 10 to 40 billion solar masses, and may be home to between 30 and 40 billion stars, compared to 200-400 billion for the Milky Way, and 1 trillion stars for Andromeda. This galaxy is small compared to the Andromeda galaxy M 31, and to our Milky Way.
I thought I should see what could happen with some 480 sec exposures. I managed 10 of them before becoming sleepy... I broke camp at 12:55 am and headed back to the city, about 50 km.
The landscape was dotted with farmers combining their crops well into the early hours of the morning.
Thanks for looking!
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