Under exceptionally good viewing
conditions with no light pollution, the Triangulum Galaxy
can be seen with the naked eye. It is one of the most
distant permanent objects that can be viewed without the aid
of a telescope. Being a diffuse object, its visibility is
strongly affected by small amounts of light pollution. It
ranges from easily visible by direct vision in dark skies to
a difficult averted vision object in rural or suburban
skies. For this reason, Triangulum is one of the critical
sky marks of the Bortle Dark-Sky Scale. The galaxy is
sometimes informally referred to as the "Pinwheel Galaxy" by
some amateur astronomy references and in some public
outreach websites. However, the SIMBAD Astronomical
Database, a professional astronomy database that contains
formal designations for astronomical objects, indicates that
the name "Pinwheel Galaxy" is used to refer to Messier
101,and several other amateur astronomy resources and other
public outreach websites also identify Messier 101 by that
name.
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