The Triangulum Galaxy

This is a spiral galaxy some 2.73 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Triangulum from which it gets its name. It is catalogued as Messier 33, M33 or NGC 598 and it's the third-largest member of the Local Group of galaxies, behind the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy. It's one of the most distant permanent objects that can be viewed with the naked eye.

This is probably the best Deep Sky object I have taken and processed myself from my back garden in Tyldesley. I decided to use my camera's built-in long exposure noise reduction feature instead of taking separate dark frames. Here are the acquisition details:

• Unmodded Nikon D500 with handheld intervalometer
• SkyWatcher 80 ED refractor telescope
• HEQ5 Pro tracking mount
• 25 light (image) frames of 90 seconds @ ISO 800
• 25 flat and 25 bias calibration frames
• Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in Adobe PhotoShop CC