A breathtaking image of a 'barely visible' galaxy containing 40 billion stars was captured from Abu Dhabi on Friday, October 4.
In a recent social media update, the UAE's Astronomy Centre unveiled a breathtaking image of the Triangulum Galaxy (M33), a spiral galaxy located in the Triangle constellation, as photographed by the Al-Khatim Astronomical Observatory. This distant marvel is situated 2.7 million light-years away, making it the second closest spiral galaxy to our own. To provide some context, light takes approximately 61,000 years to traverse from one end of the galaxy to the other. This galaxy is home to approximately 40 billion stars and ranks as the third largest in our local group, following the Milky Way and Andromeda.
Interestingly, this galaxy is barely discernible to the naked eye, even under perfect dark conditions, making it the most distant celestial object we can observe without the aid of a telescope. The image shared by the Astronomy Centre features numerous small red spots, which are dense clouds of hydrogen gas where new stars are currently being formed. The image captured by the Al-Khatim Astronomical Observatory is a composite of 215 individual photos, each taken over two minutes, resulting in a total exposure time of 7 hours and 12 minutes. The image was captured using an 80mm refracting telescope equipped with a light pollution filter, which enabled the revelation of such a detailed view of this distant celestial wonder.
