Area around the Triangulum Galaxy (ground-based image)

This wide-field view of the sky around the nearby galaxy Messier 33 was assembled from images forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The original photographs were taken over a period spanning more than 40 years, from 1949 until the early 1990s. As a result, some of the nearer stars in the picture have moved as a result of their significant proper motions. These show up as double dots — one red and one blue. The huge galaxy at the centre of the picture is tens or hundreds of thousands of times more distant than these nearby stars.