[CheyenneWills]

This is an image of M33, a galaxy in the constellation of Triangulum.  It is 3.2 million light years away, and is around 61,000 light years across.

It took almost 3 hours total of exposure, spread across a bunch of shorter exposures (12 5 minute exposures for the "luminescence"   and 12 3 minute exposures for each of the red, green and blue exposures).  These exposures are combined and processed to create the final image.

[tulkula]

This is sublime Cheyenne. Thank you for sharing.

[donkol]

Great shot. The red blobs are areas of intense new star formation.

[CheyenneWills]

Great shot. The red blobs are areas of intense new star formation.

Yes, the red blobs are star factories    

I had a couple frames with a H-Alpha filter, but the quality of those images weren't good, due to the light of dawn starting to effect the images.  Hydrogen, which is abundant in star formation areas, emits light at specific wave lengths, and one of the frequencies is called Hydrogen-Alpha.   

Also in general the weather wasn't all that great on Saturday night, there were clouds until midnight, so the individual stars are more "puffy"

[RobertH]

Wow - you really have the image stackin' thing going on!