Triangulum is a small and rather dim constellation, which can be seen in northern hemisphere. Triangulum is located close to the famous Andromeda galaxy and it is quite easy to identify due to its clear shape. Ancient people used to call Triangulum as Sicilia, because according to Roman myth Ceres asked Jupiter to locate Sicily Island to the sky.

The brightest star in Triangulum constellation is white giant star beta Trianguli, whose magnitude is 3. Its second-brightest star, the yellow-white subgiant star alpha Trianguli has a magnitude of 3.41. Constellation includes also a very important deep sky object, the Triangulum galaxy M33, which is the third biggest galaxy in the local group. Bigger ones are Andromeda and Milky Way. Triangulum galaxy is also known as Pinwheel galaxy and it is about 2.9 million light years away. Its magnitude is 5.8, which means it is bright enough to be seen by the naked eye under the darkest skies.

In order to locate constellation Triangulum, start by finding Taurus (Taurus explained a little bit) and its star Aldebaran. Next locate Cassiopeia (Cassiopeia explained a little bit) and its star Shedir. “Draw a line” from Aldebaran to Shedir. Next locate Perseus and its star Algol. After this “draw a line” from Algol (crossing the previous line from Aldebaran to Shedir by 90 degrees), just like shown in the figure on left side. You should now identify the shape of Triangulum on the right side of the big line, in the end of the shorter line.

Now that you have located Triangulum, it is time to observe the stars in it as well as M33 galaxy. You can find the Pinwheel (M33) galaxy with the help of the figure on left side. The galaxy is located on the right side of the constellation, a little bit away from the lowest star of the constellation.

Triangulum is an interesting object to in the night sky because it includes M33 Pinwheel galaxy as well as two NGC galaxies (not included in this article). Triangulum belongs to those “easy-to-find” galaxies because of its clearly recognizable shape.