The 'house' M33.

[ollypenrice]

This is a popular target with guests and I tend to see if I can use new data to tickle up the 'house' image. I must be about at the data limit now for this shortish focal length image (really three focal lengths since varisous scopes have weighed in, but it is mainly a short FL image.) And I dream up little processing tweaks. It keeps me off the streets!  This galaxy has a 'grainy surface' look which makes me worry that it's noisy but I don't think it is. It can't be with thirty odd hours!

Olly

[WaveSoarer]

Incredible image.

[sloz1664]

Unbelievable Olly. It looks 3D.

[David Smith]

Spectacular

[Ruud]

It is an impressive image, Olly. Maybe the graininess on the galaxy is a hint of even more detail than the image already shows.

Thank you for posting this beautiful image.

[Tom OD]

The brown central dust areas seem to be sitting on top of the galaxy, very 3D like. Excellent.

Tom.

[tingting44]

loving this a lot olly! is it Ha,RGB?

what length exposures did you do?

[ollypenrice]

loving this a lot olly! is it Ha,RGB?

what length exposures did you do?

It's LRGB plus Ha added only to red. Subs were mainly 15 minutes. The background sky is, as usual for me in galaxy images, RGB only. This makes it easier to keep the stars small and colourful.

Olly

[Chris]

Love the h alpha and the dark dust, it really makes the image pop!

[ollypenrice]

Love the h alpha and the dark dust, it really makes the image pop!

Ah yes, as Martin might say of the Ha layer, 'To bling or not to bling?' I blung. Or blang? 

Olly

[Knight of Clear Skies]

I love the eye-like HII regions along the top of the galaxy, you can see where the radiation pressure from the newly formed clusters has pushed the gases outwards. They are probably fairly spherical in reality, but we are looking through a greater depth of hydrogen towards the edges.

[swag72]

This is a great picture as well as an excellent example how you can revisit the image each year with additional data and keep adding to it

[laudropb]

Wonderful !!!!!

[Chris]

Ah yes, as Martin might say of the Ha layer, 'To bling or not to bling?' I blung. Or blang? 

Olly

Yep thats a totally pimped out M33! :-D

[astro mick]

That's not bad Olly,nearly as good as mine!!!!

I wish.

Mick.

[ChrisLX200]

I think it appears 'grainy' Olly because you're resolving stars in it! Blue giants perhaps, but I've seen it my own image and it's def not noise

ChrisH

[james_screech]

Amazing image.

[ollypenrice]

It can't be stars, alas. You'd need orders of magnitude more resolution but I do wonder what causes this effect. 

Olly

[Space Cowboy]

Fabulous image!

[Knight of Clear Skies]

I think it appears 'grainy' Olly because you're resolving stars in it! Blue giants perhaps, but I've seen it my own image and it's def not noise

ChrisH

I wouldn't rule out that possibility. While you might need more resolution to resolve individual stars blue giants can be several orders of magnitude brighter than their neighbours, so they could dominate the light received on a given pixel. This would get averaged out more when looking at more distant galaxies. Andromeda is about the same distance and doesn't show this, but perhaps it's composed of older stars on average? Would be interesting to find out.

Another possibility that comes to mind is that the distribution of dust might be different to other galaxies. Triangulum is quite small compared to Andromeda and M101 so a lot less massive, could dust escape from the disc more easily?

Or it could be something completely different.

[AstroGZ]

Amazing image!

[ollypenrice]

I like the dust distribution hypothesis and almost posted the same thought. M33 has a curiously uniform surface brightness compared with other face on spirals.

Olly

[Epicycle]

Wow, magnificent.

[toxic]

beaut image 

[Moonshane]

this sort of image quality literally makes me laugh out loud with glee.