Target Details
The Triangulum Galaxy, Messier 33, is a spiral galaxy approximately 3 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Triangulum. The Triangulum Galaxy is the third-largest member of the Local Group of galaxies, which includes the Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy and about 44 other smaller galaxies. It is one of the most distant permanent objects that can be viewed with the naked eye.
The galaxy is the smallest spiral galaxy in the Local Group and it is believed to be a satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy due to their interactions, velocities and proximity to one another in the night sky. It also has an H-II nucleus.
Capture Details
Data captured 22 September, 2017.
24x 10 minute exposures at ISO400.
Equipment Details
Skywatcher Quattro 200 CF
NEQ6 Pro
Canon 40d (IR Filter removed)
Skywatcher ST-80
QHY5L-II
Processing Details
This image was processed in Pixinsight & Lightroom.
Calibration and Stacking in Pixinsight.
Dynamic Crop - To remove black edges & integration artifacts.
Channel Extraction - Split RGB Channels.
Dynamic Background Extraction to each channel to remove gradients. I was more agressive with Green.
Channel Combination - Recombine Channels.
Canon Banding Reduction script - To remove horizontal lines.
Photometric Colour Calibration - To colour calibrate the image.
SCNR - To neutralise green.
Deconvolution - To bring out some fine detail.
Multiscale Linear Transform - Noise reduction.
Histrogram Transformation - To stretch the image and bring out the data.
Curves Transformation - To increase contrast.
Local Histogram Equialisation - To sharpen and increase detail.
Multiscale Linear Transform - To sharpen and increase detail.
Unsharpmask - To sharpen and increase detail.
Local Histogram Equialisation - Increase detail.
Dark Structure Enhance - To increase contrast in inner arms.
Curves Transformation - To improve contrast on entire image.
Curves Transformation - To increase saturation, using rangemask to select galaxy.
Export as JPEG and import into Lightroom.
Increase Contrast (+25)
Clip Blacks (-25)
Export final JPEG for upload.