M33

Here’s my latest picture of M33 on the society’s 20" scope; an improvement on the higher res. mosaic in terms of smoothness and aesthetic appeal. I just managed to squeeze it into the field of view using the Meade focal reducer lenses and tilting the camera. It’s quite surprising that this galaxy is the size of the moon. It is one of those vast celestial objects on the dark shores of the world visible to human eyes. Its visibility is strongly dependent on the sky transparency and the scattering level of light pollution. I’ve never seen it with my bare eyes, only the nearby cluster NGC 752, although it only takes the tiniest telescope to see M33. Big telescopes will reveal very subtle patches of brightness within its spiral arms. In other words, it really looks nothing like the photograph. To the lower left of centre is a HUGE nebula many, many times larger than our Galaxy’s Orion Nebula that has its own New General Catalogue entry.

My attempt at stitching photos together.

This is a worthy subject for a panorama: M33 the close spiral galaxy. It has lots of nebulae and clumps of stars visible - click on it and scrutinise the outer regions. I did 4 x 4 x 15 second pictures on the 20" scope with the centre of the galaxy in each corner and tried to stitch them together using the camera's software. The brightnesses were all different - I spent ages trying to adjust the brightness of different parts of the final picture but I had to stop sometime. I don't know of any free software that can easily correct for these subtle brightness differences. Anyway, my previous M33 pic (below) made it into print in my society's newsletter... but I've done as I said in the accompanying post and taken an improved picture (without any of those trailed smudges or the heavy blue bias).