This is the well-recognized
M33, The Triangulum Galaxy, sitting right at the edge of the Triangulum Constellation next to a northern border edge of Pisces. M33 is our second largest near neighbor within the Local Group with a distance of 2.73 Mly (840 kpc) according to the
Wikipedia Triangular Galaxy Article. It has a diameter of about 60 kly with estimated 40 billion stars. For comparison, the Andromeda Galaxy is 2.54 Mly (778 kpc) distant, nearly the same, but 220 kly in size with estimated 1 trillion stars. The Milky Way is around 170-200 kly in diameter, upwards of 500 billion stars. These stats make M33 the junior member of of the Local Group's three major galaxies.
It was my wish to add Hydrogen Alpha data to this image, but my imaging time was interrupted by smoke. Nevertheless, the red channel data does a fairly decent job of showing the H-II regions of the galaxy. I was pleased with how the coloring came out. I used PixInsight's PhotometricColorCalibration process with the G2V star reference setting. After color saturation adjustment, I came up with this reddish and blue version. I was dissatisfied with some of my past images of M33, which I thought were too bland in the color.
If I could start this all over again, I would have chosen a shorter exposure time for the luminance channel frames. I think I would not have blown out so many stars, however M33 was not unduly affected by this choice.
Referring to the Original Version, the FLI ML16200 paired with the Takahashi 106-EDX4 makes for a great framing of the whole galaxy and its immediate vicinity. Revision D is an annotated version showing an extensive amount of background galaxies.
In the final version I cropped the image to frame just the galaxy, but whichever field of view you prefer, I hope you enjoy this image.
Comments