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M33 is a spiral galaxy located some 3 million light years distant in the direction of the constellation known as Triangulum. M33, along with our own Milky Way Galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and others are members of a small cluster of galaxies known as the Local Group.  

In 1764 Charles Messier made it the thirty third object, M 33, of his famous catalog.

This image is a composite from two black and white images taken with the Palomar Observatory's 48-inch (1.2-meter) Samuel Oschin Telescope as a part of the Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS II). The images were recorded on two glass photographic plates - one sensitive to red light and the other to blue. The plates were scanned and color combined to produce the image seen here.

The Samuel Oschin Telescope was used to generate the Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey POSS II and the Digital Palomar Observatory Sky Survey DPOSS.
Plates for the POSS II survey were donated by the Eastman Kodak Corporation.
The POSS II survey was enabled by grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Geographic Society, and the National Science Foundation. Partial funding for the DPOSS survey was provided by the Norris Foundation.
Plates were scanned at the Space Telescope Science Institute, and the results catalogued at Caltech.
URL for POSS II: http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~wws/poss2.html
URL for DPOSS: http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~george/dposs/  

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