Messier 33 The Triangulum Galaxy

[Laurin Dave]

After what seems like weeks of poor weather the clouds cleared long enough on Monday night to capture 3 hrs of luminance with my Esprit 150 SX-46 and an hour each of RGB with my piggybacked Esprit 100 ASI1600. I processed the image with a combination of APP (currently using the trial version) and Photoshop, interestingly from the same data APP produced an RGB combination with stronger colour and all integrations had higher SNR and lower FWHM than Pi..  I added in some Ha data in Photoshop that I'd taken this time last year with the Esprit 150 ASI1600 combo..  

“Spiral galaxy M33 is located in the triangle-shaped constellation Triangulum, earning it the nickname the Triangulum galaxy. About half the size of our Milky Way galaxy, M33 is the third-largest member of our Local Group of galaxies following the Andromeda galaxy (M31) and the Milky Way.  Clearly visible in the image is NGC 604, an enormous star-forming nebula. Spanning almost 1,500 light-years, NGC 604 is nearly 100 times larger than the Orion Nebula in our own galaxy and contains more than 200 hot massive stars.

M33 has a relatively bright apparent magnitude of 5.7, making it one of the most distant objects that keen-eyed observers can view with the unaided eye (under exceptionally clear and dark skies). Although a telescope will start to reveal some of M33’s spiral features, the diffuse galaxy is actually easiest to examine with low magnification and a wide field of view, such as through binoculars. It is best observed in October.

Although others may have viewed the galaxy earlier, Charles Messier was the first to catalogue M33 after observing it in August 1764. In the 1920s, astronomer Edwin Hubble studied dozens of variable stars in M33, which helped him to estimate the object’s distance and prove that M33 is not a nebula within our own galaxy, as previously suspected, but actually a separate galaxy outside our own.” Source NASA

Thanks for looking

Dave

 

 

[Allinthehead]

That is wonderful Dave.

[gorann]

Looking great Dave!

Interesting to read that APP outperforms PI in calibration and stacking! Any thoughts about that Wim? @wimvb

[Laurin Dave]

Thanks Richard and Goran, might be my settings of course with Pixinsight..  the recent update did mess me about though, calibration went wrong as the darks got turned upside down for some reason..  

[dannybgoode]

Very nice - I have a way to go before mine is looking like this

I like this galaxy a lot though and its a great target to cut your teeth on.  Easy enough to find but a challenge to do well.

[Laurin Dave]

6 minutes ago, dannybgoode said:

Very nice - I have a way to go before mine is looking like this

I like this galaxy a lot though and its a great target to cut your teeth on.  Easy enough to find but a challenge to do well.

Thanks..  this was my go to target when I started out.. spent many many nights trying to get a decent image through my LX200 with various DSLRs..  then on the advice of various well known SGLers brought a refractor (or two) ..  

[wimvb]

Great image, Dave. Subtly processed. 

33 minutes ago, gorann said:

Looking great Dave!

Interesting to read that APP outperforms PI in calibration and stacking! Any thoughts about that Wim? @wimvb

Not really, Göran; I don't know APP. In PI you would use various tools to get the best results. And you could certainly adjust the integration process to yield the smallest fwhm or the lowest noise. Maybe some of the same tools that PI uses are incorporated "under the hood" in APP's standard processes. All I know is that PI is very rigorous mathematically, and allows you to tweak all kinds of settings. The thing that makes PI so powerful also gives it its steep learning curve. And at times that rigour can be counterproductive. But in my opinion, in the end it's the pilot, and not the plane, that gets you to your destination.

[tomato]

A very fine M33, nice subtle processing, and beautifully framed, unlike my recent attempt.

[ApophisAstros]

I like this , my best image is M33.

Roger

[ollypenrice]

Lovely image, Dave, and one which whispers enticingly rather than shouts. This puts me in mind of the way M33 appears visually, too. The tiny stars are also very fine.

Olly

[Skyline]

Wonderful clean image, with a very good balance of colours, I always struggle with galaxy colour processing.

[x6gas]

Very nice indeed Dave.  It's a tricky target to process with a large angular size but fairly low surface brightness and you've done really well.

[Miguel1983]

Nice work !

[alan potts]

Lovely shot Dave, I must have missed this one, very nice detail right to the heart of the galaxy.

Alan

[lux eterna]

Wonderful processing - not too much an not too little !

Ragnar

[Ouroboros]

Yep. Lovely natural looking image of one of my favourite objects.