In the small constellation of Triangulum lies one of our more prominent members of our Local Group of galaxies, M33 (NGC598). Although this spiral galaxy appears on the sky to be larger than the width of the full moon, it has a very low surface brightness (it is classified as a late-type Sc galaxy).

The above picture was taken on the 29th September 2008 using a Celestron NextStar 102 SLT with a Fujifilm S2 digital SLR camera. The frame is a combination of 16 x 15 second exposures at ISO 1600 - a total of 4 minutes. The brighter nebulosity of the central region of the galaxy can be seen together with some faint hint of the S-shaped spiral arms. North is in the direction of the top left-hand corner of the image.

The 16 exposures were spread over a period of 8.5 minutes (starting at 23:37 BST) during which time the field of view had rotated by 0.95 degrees. The images were processed by subtracting an average dark frame from each exposure and then coadding the frames, taking into account the field rotation. The result was then processed using levels in Photoshop.