Hubble Space Telescope and Triangulum galaxy (M33)
Rome [ENA] On January 7, 2019 NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has produced an excellent and accurate portrait of the Triangulum galaxy (M33), displaying a full spiral face luminous with the light of nearly 25 million individually resolved stars. It is the largest high-resolution mosaic image of Triangulum ever compiled , composed of 54 Hubble fields of view spanning an area more than 19,000 light-years across.
The Local Group of galaxies is dominated by the Milky Way, Andromeda, and Triangulum. As the junior member of this trio of spiral galaxies, Triangulum offers the valuable comparisons and contrasts that only a neighboring companion can. Most notably, Triangulum's star formation is 10 times more intense than in the comparable Hubble panorama of the close Andromeda galaxy. Astronomers have only begun to analyze the immense amount of data generated by these new Hubble observations, and expect they will yield important insights into the effects of such strong star formation.
The well arranged nature of Triangulum's spiral, with dust distributed throughout, is another distinctive feature. Astronomers think that in the Local Group, Triangulum has been something of an introvert, isolated from frequent interactions with other galaxies while staying active and engaged in producing stars along organized spiral arms. Uncovering the Triangulum galaxy’s story will provide an important point of reference in understanding how galaxies develop over time, and the diverse paths that shape what one can see nowadays.