Here's an image I took of the Triangulum Galaxy, Messier object #33, back in October. It's an LRGB and I've had a lot of difficulty processing this one. Click Here to see a larger version of this image. In addition to trying to pull the faint areas out, I also had bad color gradients to deal with. The good thing about that is that it's made me realize that I really need to spend some serious learning time on how to process all this data I've been collecting. Fortunately we have a holiday weekend coming up (Thanksgiving is Thursday), so maybe I can catch up on some resources that I have such as Adam Block's Making Every Pixel Count DVD's.
M33 is a beautiful spiral galaxy when processed correctly. It has a relatively small nucleus region so quite a bit of arm detail can be exposed. In my image there are numerous HII regions visible (the red blotchy areas) as well as areas where newborn hot blue stars are brightly shining.
Amateur astronomers should feel a bit sorry for this nice looking galaxy. It would be a showpiece object elsewhere in the sky, but its proximity to The Great Andromeda Galaxy, M31, forces it into also-ran status. I like to observe M33 visually from a dark site because the spiral shape is easily noted.
I'm imaging again tonight, the main target has been the Rosette Nebula. I've been using the remote setup again, including running the scope through its complete alignment process. My brother was visiting tonight and I was able to stay inside but still image while he was here. It's not perfect, the connection drops oftenm but it generally works fairly well without a lot of hassle.
I wonder how much longer the clear spell will last.
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