Messier 33 - The Triangulum Galaxy

At the end of the British summer we are experiencing some rather nice moonless warm evenings.
So .... to the telescope!

I had not yet given the Sky-Watcher 130P-DS a proper go so decided to use this.
A "problem" with a Newtonian reflector is that is does go out of collimation and indeed this needed adjusting before I also had to wrestle with the balance to get it mounted correctly.

Now for the target. Well, I wanted a fairly bright object that could hopefully show off the potential of this telescope that would be up all evening and be well placed for me in the UK.
I opted for Messier 33 in Triangulum. A vast spiral galaxy some 2.73 million light years away and is part of our local group of galaxies. It spans 60,000 light years across.

I do love how the brighter stars are given diffraction spikes too (by the spider vanes holding the secondary mirror in the telescope).

The tech deets:

31 x 240 secs. (2hr 4min.)

Sky-Watcher 130P-DS

Altair Hypercam 183C Pro

Gain 1000 / Offset 40 / Bin 1x1

SkyTech LPRO Max filter

Processed with Deep Sky Stacker and Affinity Photo

Clear skies MJ