M33 NGC598 Triangulum Galaxy 9/19/2009 12:02:57 AM Latitude: 43° 31′ 21″ North Longitude: 122˚ 52’ 35” West 4658 ft. Snow Peak S/E of Cottage Grove, Oregon. Seeing: E Transparency: 7 Bortle: 2 SQM: 21.91. Telescopes / Optics: TMB 80mm f/ 6 480mm. Mount : AstroPhysics 1200 GOTO. Camera: SBIG ST10XME 5.75 Hours; Ha-LRGB (Ha=50 min; L=145 min; RGB= 150 min.; (5 /10 min. sub-images) FOV 106’ x 72’. Information: Went deep and used 9nm Ha to bring out all the nebula present in M33. My longest exposures yet. Used CCDSoft, CCDStack, AIP, Photoshop. Hope to zero in on NGC 604 in the future.
M 33 (NGC 598) Triangulum Galaxy
M33 NGC598 Triangulum Galaxy is visible to the naked eye from a very dark sky site, Bortle 3 or better. The Triangulum Galaxy is a very challenging naked eye object but it can be seen. M33 is a Type SC galaxy belonging to the local group, 0.9 Mpc or 3.1 Million Light Years away.
This image was taken with a TMB triplet APO 80mm f/6 refractor. Used a TeleVue .8 reducer / flattener (TRF2008). The full resolution image, actually reveals the hint of structure and stars within the red nebula knots. These knots care visible throughout the spiral arms. These Nebula (Red areas) are star forming areas much like the Great Orion Nebula (M42) and Eagle Nebula (M16). I had taken a much shorter image years ago with an Orion ED 80 and wanted to really capture more detail. You can also see several background galaxies in this image.
The bright Red nebula (upper right portion) is NGC 604. NGC form the largest known HII region currently known. The nebula spans 1500 light years. M33 itself is approximately 60,000 light years in diameter, home to 40 billion stars. Our own Milky Way (100,000 LY diameter) is estimated to have 400 Billion stars.