THE TRIANGULUM GALAXY
M33 • Spiral galaxy • Triangulum • 2.73 million light-years from Earth
🔭
Askar 130PHQ
📷
ZWO 2600MC Pro
🌃
Bortle 8
⏱️
18 hours
🗓️
November 2024
Overview
The Triangulum Galaxy, also known as M33, is the third largest galaxy in the Local Group, after the Andromeda Galaxy and our own Milky Way. Located around 2.73 million light years from Earth, it contains an estimated 40 billion stars.
Although relatively nearby in cosmic terms, the Triangulum Galaxy has very low surface brightness. This makes it a challenging target for astrophotography, particularly from light polluted urban skies.
Background
This was a fairly straight-forward imaging project, for once! Most galaxies are so far away that they appear as little more than tiny dots in the sky, but this particular one is a relatively close-by neighbour. This means that it’s large enough in the sky that my Askar 130PHQ‘s focal length of 1000mm is well-suited for framing.
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Science
The most prominent red area is called NGC 604 (highlighted in the image below). This is a stellar nursery; like the Triangulum Galaxy’s version of our own Orion Nebula, but about 40 times bigger!
Kit list
This is the equipment I used to capture the image.
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Telescope: Askar 130PHQ
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Camera: ZWO ASI 2600MC Pro
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Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro
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Guidescope: William Optics 50mm with ROTO Lock
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Guidecam: ZWO ASI 120MM Mini
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Control: ASIAIR Plus
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Filter: Optolong L-Quad Enhance
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Processing walkthrough
The Triangulum Galaxy is a broadband target, so I just used an Optolong L-Quad Enhance filter to help with light pollution. I find that particular filter also brings out red Hα regions, of which there are quite a few in the galaxy’s spiral arms. I boosted the saturation of the red a little more during processing, to help those areas pop.
See below for a full video walkthrough of how I processed the image.
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Example source data
Here are example single subframes and freshly integrated stacks, just with simple stretches applied.
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