The Triangulum Galaxy is the third-largest member of the Local Group of galaxies, which includes our own Milky Way Galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy and about 30 other smaller galaxies. It is one of the most distant permanent objects that can be viewed with the unaided eye.

This galaxy has a inclination of 54° to the line of sight from the Earth, allowing the structure to be examined without significant obstruction by gas and dust. The disk of the Triangulum galaxy appears warped out to a radius of about 8 kpc. There may be a halo surrounding the galaxy, but there is no bulge at the nucleus. This is an isolated galaxy and there are no indications of recent mergers or interactions with other galaxies, and it lacks the dwarf spheroidals or tidal tails associated with the Milky Way

Equipment: Hutech-modified Canon T2i dSLR utilizing an IDAS UIBAR-III filter mounted prime focus on a Borg 101ED f/4 Astrograph mounted on an unguided HEQ5.

Location: Island Star Party, Bright Angel Park, Duncan, BC, Canada

Date/Time: September 4, 2010 3:45am PDT

Exposure: 60 x 1 minute at ISO 1600

Conditions: Temperature 14.2°C, Humidity 75%, Dew point 9.7°C. LVM 6.0, Transparency 5/5, Steadiness 5/5, clear skies

Processing:

ImagesPlus 3.82a x64 - Auto-process dSLR - Bayer at capture white balance; digital development from raw, dark & flat frame calibration, normalize, grading, alignment, average min/max exclude combine. Aggressive contrast stretch (BP 1481,Bkgd 0); crop & save as 48 bit TIF.

ACDSee Pro 3: further contrast stretch, resize, reduce colour depth to 24 bit, save as jpg.