What is the Triangulum Galaxy?

M33 or the Triangulum Galaxy is a nearby face-on spiral galaxy with large, “S”-shaped, open arms and a small central bulge, this galaxy type is called Sc(s). Astronomers call spiral arms of galaxies like this one “flocculent” because of their knotty, somewhat ill-defined structure, in contrast to “grand design” spirals. The Triangulum Galaxy is a member of our Local Group of galaxies, its distance being only 2.4 million light years, slightly further than the Great Andromeda Galaxy. It is in fact so near that bright stellar associations and active nebulous areas can easily be resolved. M33 is a difficult object for visual observation as it takes up a big area in the sky and has a low surface brightness, so a dark and transparent sky is needed for its observation, otherwise little can be seen. It is easy to be found, as it lies at about the same distance as M31 from the Andromeda chain of stars formed by Gamma, Beta, and Delta, but at the opposite direction. Under dark skies, it is visible in almost any pair of binoculars, and even to the naked eye of sharp-eyed observers.

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