{"id":628402,"date":"2026-09-18T09:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T09:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/628402\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T09:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T09:34:10","slug":"apod-2026-september-18-messier-33-the-triangulum-galaxy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/628402\/","title":{"rendered":"APOD: 2026 September 18 \u2013 Messier 33: The Triangulum Galaxy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p-md margin-0 media-detail-hero__description\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tExplanation: The small, northern constellation <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hawastsoc.org\/deepsky\/tri\/index.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Triangulum<\/a> harbors this magnificent face-on spiral galaxy, Messier 33. Its popular names include the Pinwheel Galaxy or just the <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/mission\/hubble\/science\/explore-the-night-sky\/hubble-messier-catalog\/messier-33\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Triangulum Galaxy<\/a>. M33 is over 50,000 light-years in diameter, third largest in the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Local_Group\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Local Group<\/a> of galaxies after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), and our own Milky Way. <a href=\"https:\/\/apod.nasa.gov\/apod\/ap211106.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">About<\/a> 3 million light-years from the Milky Way, M33 is itself thought to be a satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy and <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/astro-ph?papernum=0506609\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">astronomers<\/a> in these two galaxies would likely have spectacular views of each other&#8217;s grand spiral star systems. As for the view from the Milky Way, this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/photo?fbid=29170483172553330&amp;set=a.627529503942078\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">sharp telescopic image<\/a> shows off M33&#8217;s blue star clusters and pinkish <a href=\"https:\/\/apod.nasa.gov\/apod\/ap091017.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">star forming<\/a> regions along the galaxy&#8217;s loosely wound spiral arms. In fact, the <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/image-detail\/9697_full_jpg\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">cavernous NGC 604<\/a> is the brightest star forming region, seen here at about the 5 o&#8217;clock position from the galaxy center. Like M31, M33&#8217;s population of well-measured variable stars have helped make this nearby spiral a cosmic yardstick for <a href=\"https:\/\/adsabs.harvard.edu\/cgi-bin\/bib_query?1926ApJ....63..236H\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">establishing<\/a> the distance <a href=\"https:\/\/antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov\/diamond_jubilee\/debate96.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">scale of the Universe<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>APOD&#8217;s main NASA site is <a href=\"https:\/\/asterisk.apod.com\/viewtopic.php?t=45023\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">moving<\/a>: From <a href=\"https:\/\/apod.nasa.gov\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">apod.nasa.gov<\/a> to <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/apod\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">science.nasa.gov\/apod<\/a><br \/>Tomorrow&#8217;s picture: <a href=\"https:\/\/apod.nasa.gov\/apod\/fap\/ap260919.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">star party weekend<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Explanation: The small, northern constellation Triangulum harbors this magnificent face-on spiral galaxy, Messier 33. Its popular names include&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[243471,61,60,82,247],"class_list":["post-628402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-apod","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}