Watch: Indian man captures galaxy 2.7 million light-years away from Uttarakhand
An amateur astrophotographer from Uttarakhand has captured the Triangulum Galaxy, a spiral galaxy located 2.7 million light-years away, using a compact telescope and a cooled camera from his Himalayan village.
The Triangulum Galaxy, also known as Messier 33 or NGC 598, captured by Ramesh Bhadri from Tehri Garhwal, Uttarakhand. The distinctive pink regions are giant clouds of ionised hydrogen gas where new stars are being born. (Photo: @pahadi_astro / Instagram)
There is a village in Tehri Garhwal, Uttarakhand, perched high in the Himalayas, where the skies are dark enough to see galaxies with the naked eye. Amateur astrophotographer Ramesh Bhadri did not just see one. He photographed it.
His subject was the Triangulum Galaxy, also known as Messier 33 or NGC 598.
The light in his image did not come from a studio or a screen. It left that galaxy approximately 2.7 million years ago, when early humans were barely walking upright on Earth, and finally landed on his camera sensor in a Himalayan village.
That is not science fiction. That is just physics.
WHAT IS THE TRIANGULUM GALAXY?
The Triangulum Galaxy is the third-largest galaxy in what astronomers call the Local Group, a cluster of roughly 50 galaxies that includes our own Milky Way and the nearby Andromeda Galaxy. Think of it as our cosmic neighbourhood.
It is a spiral galaxy with sweeping arms that curl outward from a bright central core, much like a pinwheel, which is also its popular nickname.
Sitting roughly 2.7 to 3 million light-years from Earth (one light-year equals about 9.46 trillion kilometres, and is the distance travelled by light in one year in a vacuum), it contains an estimated 40 billion stars.
Our own Milky Way, by comparison, holds between 100 and 400 billion.
A STELLAR NURSERY BIGGER THAN IMAGINATION
One of the most spectacular features inside M33 is NGC 604, a colossal star-forming region spanning roughly 1,500 light-years across.
The famous Orion Nebula, visible on clear winter nights even without a telescope, is only about 24 light-years wide.
NGC 604 is among the largest known regions of active star birth in the entire Local Group.
These regions glow pink and red in astrophotography images because of a process called hydrogen-alpha emission.
Young, massive stars blast intense ultraviolet radiation into surrounding hydrogen gas, ionising it, which means stripping electrons away from hydrogen atoms.
When those electrons snap back into place, they release light at a specific wavelength of 656.3 nanometres, producing that unmistakable reddish glow.
HOW RAMESH CAPTURED IT FROM A HIMALAYAN VILLAGE
Ramesh used a Redcat 51 telescope, a compact and portable instrument, paired with a ZWO ASI533MC Pro camera and an L-Pro filter.
The filter blocks artificial light from cities and streetlights, letting fainter cosmic signals reach the sensor uninterrupted.
Because the Earth rotates, long exposures require precise sky tracking.
Over hours, the camera accumulates photons, which are individual particles of light, building enough signal to reveal the galaxy's spiral arms, glowing nebulae, and dust lanes.
From a dark Himalayan sky with minimal light pollution, even modest equipment can reach extraordinary depths.
A GALAXY ON A COLLISION COURSE
In approximately 4 to 5 billion years, the Milky Way and Andromeda are expected to merge into a single massive galaxy, informally called Milkomeda.
The Triangulum Galaxy, gravitationally bound to Andromeda, is likely to be pulled into this collision too.
The stars in Ramesh's photograph are already hurtling toward us at roughly 1,00,000 kilometres per hour.
What he captured from a Himalayan rooftop is not just beautiful. It is a galaxy already on the move.
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