Taken from Wolf Mt. NW of Diamond Peak Canon F1 Canon 50mm f/1.4 Stopped down to f/2.8 Kodak E200 psuhed 8 min exposure Piggyback Losmandy G11 2 image mosaic/composite/ 3rd image of foreground
TMB 80 mm f/ 6 with Tele-Vue .8 Reducer TRF2008 / reduced TMB to f/4.8 – 384 mm Focal Length
Mount Type
Astrophysics 1200
Camera
SBIG ST10XME
Filters
Astrodon LRGB e-series of balanced filters (generation 1) 9nm HA
Film
CCD
Exposure
345 minutes (5.75 Hours) HaLRGB (Ha=50 min; L=145 min; RGB= 150 min.; (5 min. & 10 min. sub-images)
Processing
CCDSoft, CCDStack, AIP, Photoshop CS2
Date
09/19/2009
Location
Snow Peak, S/E of Cottage Grove, Oregon 122° 52′ 35″ W, 43° 31′ 21″N
Conditions
4658′ elevation, magnitude 6+ Skies; Clear ;
M 33 (NGC 598) Triangulum Galaxy M33 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 CNC APO 80mm f/6 with a TeleVue .8 reducer / flattener (TRF2008). The full resolution image actually reveals the hint of structure and stars within the many red nebula knots shown throughout its 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.