M33: Triangulum Galaxy over South Germany

[Archonom]

After shooting Andromeda, I decided to give M33 (Triangulum Galaxy) a try.

The spiral galaxy appears as a very large and bright object at the night sky, however the luminance is distributed across a larger area. Having a very light polluted night sky, it is impossible for me to detect M33 through an eye piece. Instead, I have to take pictures with my Canon and hope that the object appears on the screen after I told the GoTo hand piece to focus on the object.

After 3-4 seconds, one can see a blurry dot between the stars. After 30s shutter one can detect some structures and only after 90 - 120s M33 shows its spiral arms. A shutter of 120s products very light results at my sky, which is why I decided to limit the shutter to 120s and shoot many pictures instead of having e.g. 10x 300s. M33 is only 3 million lightyears away from us. Having a diameter of approx. 60 000 light years, the Triangulum Galaxy appears to be much smaller than the Milkyway (ca. 180 000 light years). M33 contains at least 20 - 40 billion sun masses and shelters M33 X-7, the most massive black hole known to date, which has evolved from a single star.

And a slightly modified version with less red and more blue in it:

• Site: Inner city in South Germany
• 56x120s
• ISO 1600
• Canon 1200DA
• 8'' f/5 Newton
• EQ6R
• Stacking: Sequator, which filtered the light pollution
• Editing: Increased contrast slightly
• Cropped

Before this session I went out with my Canon 1200D and a 50mm lense, trying to capture this beautiful object with a wider field:

83 x 4s, ISO 1600, F/1,8

 

There it was. The first time for me, so I was very happy when I saw this beautiful target on the stacked picture.

 

After a while, M33 appeared on the screen. The sky was