Messier 33 - The Triangulum Galaxy
Date: September 15, 2020
Cosgrove’s Cosmos Catalog ➤#0052
Messier 33 as captured by my William Optics 132mm Platform. (click image for full resolution voa Astrobin.com)
Table of Contents Show (Click on lines to navigate)
About the Target
M33, also known as NGC 598, or more commonly known as either the Triangulum Galaxy, is located 2.73 Million Light Years away in the constellation Triangulum. It is the third-largest member of the local group of galaxies which includes M31 the Andromeda Galaxy, and our own Milky Way. It is a spiral form galaxy - once of the first spiral galaxies identified as such back in 1850. It is one of the most distant objects that can be seen with the unaided eye.
The Annotated Image
An annotated image of M33 was created using Pixinsight’s ImageSolver and AnnotateImage Scripts.
The Location in the Sky
IAU/Sky & Telescope Constellation Map of Triangulum with Messier 33 marked by the yellow arrow.
About the Project
I shot my first version of this about a year ago, and I just reshot it, and I am delighted with the improvements on this version. What caused those improvements? Well, time and experience - of course, but this one has an integration that is 3x what the first one had - this really helps with signal-to-noise. This has a much better image composition. This improvement resulted from the addition of the camera rotator and these the Moacu and framing tool in Sequence Generator Pro to layout and set up my compositions well before the night of shooting has begun. Finally - the images are much sharper. This resulted from my sifting over to a focus motor and the use of auto-focus routines in SGP, which kept things sharp through the whole capture sequence, which spanned two evenings.
This image is the result of 130x150 sec exposures for a total integration time of about 5.5 hours.
“This image has also proven to be very popular - I have had a couple of people ask to make prints of it. ”
Compared to the First Attempt back in 2019
The very first time I attempted M33 was back in October of 2019, just a few short months after I had gotten my first telescope platform up and running, I was very proud of this early effort, so it is always interesting to compare with the most current effort and see how things have changed. That early effort was pretty solid considering how inexperienced I was, but clearly there new one is still better in almost every way.
You can visit the 2019 version post HERE.
Here is a side-by-side comparison:
My first effort on M33 in 2019 (Click to zoom)
The Current version (Click to Zoom)
More Information
Wikipedia: Messier 33
The Sky Live: Messier 33
Nasa: Messier 33 - Hubble image of the CoreCapture Details
Light frames
130 x 150 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C
Total integration time: 5.5 hours
Cal Frames
50 Bias exposures
25 Dark exposures bin 1x1 @ -15C
50 Flats
Capture Hardware
Scope: William Optics 132mm FLT F/7 APO
Guide Scope: Apterna 60mm
Camera: ZWO ASI294MC-Pro
Guide Camera: ZWO ASI290Mini
Focus Motor: Pegasus Astro Focus Cube 2
Field Rotator: Pegasus Astro Falcon
Mount: Ioptron CEM60
Polar Alignment: Ioptron Ipolar integrated alignment cameras
Software
Capture Software: PHD2 Guider, Sequence Generator Pro controller
Image Processing: Deepsky Stacker, Pixinsight, Photoshop, Coffee, extensive processing indecision and second-guessing, and much swearing…..
During the Summer of 2020, whilst stuck at home because of Covid I became very in improving the automation of the platform and achieving a more precise framing of the shots I made…