Messier 33

Messier 33, the Triangulum Galaxy, is located in the constellation Triangulum, which is shaped like a triangle. But the galaxy itself isn’t a triangle–it’s a more-or-less typical spiral galaxy.

I call it the Demon Galaxy, though, because for quite a long time back in my early days of astroimaging I made several failed attempts to take a picture of it. Equipment failure, bad weather, or just plain incompetence on my part produced several less-than-stellar images. But then one night, I finally got a decent set of data to work on. I had finally succeeded after multiple failures.

And then I hit a deer on the way home from the observatory.

Thankfully, this time I had no problems imaging the galaxy. And no deer were harmed at any point during or after the process.

It’s not exactly what I was hoping for, though. I combined two separate imaging runs, each using a different filter. The Dwarf 3 has two built-in filters: the Astro Filter and the DuoBand Filter. The Astro Filter is a light pollution filter that mutes light from common ground-based light sources. The DuoBand Filter only allows certain colors from Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms to pass through (mostly). The former is best for star clusters, and the latter is best for most nebulae.

A galaxy is essentially a giant nebula-filled star cluster. I reasoned that I could make the colors of the nebulae in M33 stand out more by combining the images from both filters. It did enhance the colors a bit, but I really think I need a lot more data.