Triangulum Galaxy (M33) Crop

Hubble Maps an Undisturbed Spiral Galaxy in the Milky Way's Backyard

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has produced its largest mosaic image ever of the Triangulum galaxy (M33). This image spans 14,500 light-years.

Triangulum seems to have emerged from the ages having interacted little with other galaxies, maintaining a neat, organized spiral and plenty of material for churning out new stars. Astronomers will investigate the impact of Triangulum's high star formation rate density as they comb through the huge trove of data gathered by Hubble. These contradictory features — a quiet past coupled to vigorous star formation — make Triangulum a fascinating member of the Local Group, providing key comparisons and contrasts with the Milky Way and our most massive neighbor, Andromeda.

This mosaic was created from images taken by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) between February 2017 and February 2018. The panoramic image will be presented at the 233rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Washington.

About the colours

These images are a composite of separate exposures acquired by the ACS instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope. Several filters were used to sample narrow wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter. In this case, the assigned colors are: Cyan: F475W Orange: F814W

About the data

Hubble data for this release were obtained from HST proposal 14610 (J. Dalcanton)