Photo of the Week for February 10, 2017
M33, also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy, sits high in the west on winter evenings. At magnitude 5.7, M33 is reasonably bright, but can be difficult to observe in a light-polluted sky. That’s because the galaxy is both large and nearly face-on; consequently, its light is spread out across a substantial area. In ideal conditions, far from town, M33 can be glimpsed with the naked eye, but from the suburbs it’s often difficult to detect even in a large telescope.
But M33 is a photographic gem. This fine portrait was captured near Holstein, Ontario, by John Reaume. He used a modified Canon EOS 60D DSLR camera fitted to a Sky-Watcher 80ED f/7.5 apochromatic refractor telescope. The final image is a digital stack totalling 5 hours and 15 minutes exposure time.
