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 How does one begin to describe
            such an incredible object in mere words? This image of the Pinwheel
            Galaxy is my deepest image yet of this splendor, and from an
            image processing standpoint required developing some all new
            techniques. The last
            time I
            shot this galaxy with a CCD was in 2001 and used my ST7E. Now
            lets get down to the details:

            
The Galaxy

            
Located in a
            relatively star poor constellation, M33 has an integrated photographic
            magnitude of 6.3, but is spread out over a degree of sky, and
            thus is low surface brightness. Despite this, it is a very easy
            naked eye object on any clear night, when Triangulum rides high
            in the fall and early winter skies. An interesting fact is that
            the B-V index is .55, which is getting quite reddish. You can
            see in my image above why that would be the case, the entire
            galaxy is covered with an enormous amount of red hydrogen (HII
            regions), and the blue part of the arms does not really start
            until a fair distance out from the center, thus the more yellow
            core is the dominant light source here. This galaxy actually
            has a measurable inclination, of about 4 degrees and is classed
            as an SA(s)cd galaxy. 

            
There are literally
            hundreds of reddish - pink HII regions in this image. While most
            atlases identify maybe half a dozen of the more prominent ones,
            Simbad and the Aladin online Atlas has thousands of objects.
            Look closely and you will see that a majority of them surround
            blue stars and associations. When I first put this image together,
            I couldnt believe how many HII regions contained the source of
            thier illumination, mostly hot O/B stars and clusters. I invite
            you to explore the largest image and take in the knots, faint
            tendrils and wreaths of nebulosity, and countless resolved blue
            supergiants here seen in another galaxy.

            
Processing

            
2 hours of unfiltered
            Luminance data (IR included), and one hour of H-alpha data were
            combined to make a detailed L channel. This was combined with
            one hour of RGB data in Photoshop using layers, with the RGB
            layer set to "color". The H-alpha data was next processed
            separately, and the stars removed by subtracting the blue channel.
            The color was added by using the color of the brightest nebulosities
            in the RGB data to tint the image. Next, this final H-alpha only
            image was layered in PS with the LRGB created earlier and combined
            with Lighten. 

Instrument:  12.5" f/5 Home made Newtonian
Platform:  Astrophysics 1200 QMD
CCD Camera:  SBIG 10XME NABG with Enhanced Cooling
Guider: SBIG ST4
Exposure:  HaLRGB = 60:170:20:20:20 (RGB Binned 2x2)
RGB Combine Ratio:  1: 1.05: 1.11
Filters:  AstroDon RGB Tricolor, H-Alpha, Clear
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing FWHM = 6.5 arcsec (Maxim DL - 10min subframe), Transparency 8/10
Outside Temperature:  40 F
CCD Temperature:  -30 C
Processing Tools:  Maxim DL,  Photoshop, PixInsight, CCDOps Debloomer.
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