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M33, is a beautiful face on spiral galaxy a mere 3 million light-years away. The Triangulum Galaxy is part of our Local Group of galaxies, a small handful of galaxies (including the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy) that are gravitationally associated with each other. M33 is barely visible to the naked eye under VERY dark skies making it the most distant object visible with the naked eye. While 3 million light-years seems like a vast distance, in a galactic sense, M33 is practically right next door. All of the other bright stars in the image above are located within our own galaxy.
I limited the exposures to 30 seconds due to a hasty alignment job. Much longer and many more exposures will be necessary to capture more detail, but the image turned out OK for such short sub-exposures and poor visibility.
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