The Triangulum Galaxy is a fascinating spiral galaxy that is part of our Local Group of galaxies, along with the Milky Way and Andromeda. Here are some interesting facts about this cosmic neighbor:
- The Triangulum Galaxy is about half the size of the Milky Way, with a diameter of 60,000 light-years and a mass of about 50 billion times the sun. It contains about 40 billion stars, many of which are young and hot.
- It has a very active star formation rate, which is several times higher than the Andromeda Galaxy. It has many blue regions scattered throughout its spiral arms, where new stars are being born. One of these regions is NGC 604, which is the largest star-forming region in the Local Group, spanning almost 1,500 light-years and containing more than 200 massive stars.
- It has a weak or possibly no central bar, unlike most spiral galaxies. Its core is a nebula, or a cloud of gas and dust, that is called an HII region. This is a place where hydrogen atoms are ionized by the radiation from nearby stars.
- The Triangulum Galaxy is gravitationally linked to the Andromeda Galaxy, and they may have had a close encounter in the past. They are also connected by streams of hydrogen gas and stars, which may have been stripped from them by tidal forces.
I didn't expect it to show much details from Bortel 8, especially that details are very low in single subs. But it was a nice surprise after the first night stack which showed nice spiral arms, and after night 3 it showed details of nebulae and star forming regions, which lead to extra two nights of imaging to get some more Ha
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