M33 on Sunday night

[Ian]

M33 is a large diffuse spiral galaxy in Triangulum. In dark skies its a binocular object. In Orpington it's more like relieving yourself into the gale. However, I captured the core of it using my SC3 ToUcam with no filters. The result image is 15x43 second exposures, darkframed and histogram stretched into submission. I think I can see a little spiral structure, certainly some dust lanes. What do you think?

[Whitters]

That is very nice, well done. Dark lanes obvious, hint of arms. Have you captured the Nova that Mark Armstong discovered on Sept the 7th? It is covering the right area. Worth checking.

[ This Message was edited by: Whitters on 2003-10-01 23:25 ]

[Ian]

I've had a quick look and I think the answer is yes, there is a nova there. It was discovered by LOTOSS on 1st September. When it was discovered it was at magnitude 16.9 and faded to 17.1 by 23rd.
Here is an image by Jean-Yves Benninger using a 300mm scope and probably an Audine based camera using a Kodak KAF1600. It indicates the location of the nova. I'll overlay some ticks on my image to help correlate the images.

[Ian]

My attempt, inverted and sharpened some more. The nova is indicated.

[Whitters]

Nice One!