Messier 33 or NGC 598 Spiral Galaxy

Image data obtained in October 2015 at Les Granges,  Haute Provence. Thanks to Olly Penrice for the excellent data from his tandem mounted refractors and data processing tuition.

I'm told that under a dark sky you can see M33 with your naked eye. All I can say is, I've never seen it!  Indeed it takes some finding with 10x50 binoculars although it is readily visible in my big 11x80 bins.  M33 is a member of the local group of galaxies, which includes the Andromeda (M31) and Milky Way galaxies. Although estimates of distance from the Earth vary, M33 is thought to be slightly further from us than M31 at some 2.7million Light Years.  M33 is a spiral galaxy and is smaller than either the Andromeda or Milky Way galaxies.  It is however 60,000 light years across and contains some 40 billion stars.

The recently discovered bones of Homo naledi, a very early hominid ancestor of ours found in a south african cave system, are approximately contemporary with the age of the light captured in my photograph. Makes you consider the vastness of the Universe, the finite velocity of light and the transcendental nature of time, doesn't it?  Although my previous statement does provide some illustration to the time and distances involved, strictly speaking the light doesn't share an age with the bones.   In the strange quantum world of electromagnetic radiation, the photons of light did not come into existence until the wave function collapsed when Olly's refractors caught them.  The physics of the very small is all very confusing!

It was a wonderful clear and transparent night when the above image was aquired. Whilst Olly maintained a vigil ensuring the scopes were tracking accurately, I went about the night taking widefield photographs of the stars with my Canon 400D DSLR.  I also heard a wild boar grunting in a hedge behind my tripod. Not something you hear everyday!

Back in our East Anglian home and with Christmas behind us, I finally plucked up the courage to complete processing the data and the above image is the result. I'm pretty sure this is my best effort to date at imaging a deep space subject.

Enlargement annotated to show the H11 emission Nebula NGC 604

NGC604 is larger and much brighter than the visible part of the Orion Nebula.  If NGC 604 was as near as the Orion Nebula, it would appear to outshine Venus as viewed from Earth.  A veritable stellar nursery on an unimagineable scale.

The following images, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, show NGC 604 with increasing detail and a decreasing field of view.

Credits: Olly Penrice, NASA-ESA, HST and Wikipedia