APOD: 2026 September 18 – Messier 33: The Triangulum Galaxy

APOD: 2026 September 18 – Messier 33: The Triangulum Galaxy. APOD APOD Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

Messier 33: The Triangulum Galaxy Explanation: The small, northern constellation Triangulum harbors this magnificent face-on spiral galaxy, Messier 33. Its popular names include the Pinwheel Galaxy or just the Triangulum Galaxy. M33 is over 50,000 light-years in diameter, third largest in the Local Group of galaxies after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), and our own Milky Way.

About 3 million light-years from the Milky Way, M33 is itself thought to be a satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy and astronomers in these two galaxies would likely have spectacular views of each other’s grand spiral star systems. As for the view from the Milky Way, this sharp telescopic image shows off M33’s blue star clusters and pinkish star forming regions along the galaxy’s loosely wound spiral arms. In fact, the cavernous NGC 604 is the brightest star forming region, seen here at about the 5 o’clock position from the galaxy center.

The iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max have been released today, and there’s already a teardown video of the former available on YouTube. Undoubtedly, many more will follow, but if you’ve been very anxiously waiting to take a peek inside the new iPhone 18 Pro, here’s your first chance to do so below (beware the AI voice though).

TechInsights has published an iPhone 18 Pro Max teardown that confirms the U.S. Version of the device is equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X80 modem.

The teardown starts with the pentalobe screws on the bottom, then heat, a suction cup, and alcohol are used to remove the display. The smaller Dynamic Island is made possible by moving the infrared camera under the display, and the pixels on top of it are…

The device’s modem firmware had already pointed towards the Snapdragon X80 modem. The smaller iPhone 18 Pro and the iPhone Duo use Apple’s custom-designed C2 modem worldwide, and the iPhone 18 Pro Max uses the C2 modem in every other country, so the U.S.

First iPhone 18 Pro teardown video is here. Apple iPhone 18 Pro These are the best offers from our affiliate partners.

Version of the iPhone 18 Pro Max having a Qualcomm modem is unique. IPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max models have the same Snapdragon X80 modem worldwide, although TechInsights noted that the U.S.

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Version of the iPhone 18 Pro Max has a newly-identified mmWave 5G antenna module from Apple. We will have to wait for C2 vs.

Snapdragon X80 performance tests. Apple has yet to explain why only the U.S.

Version of the iPhone 18 Pro Max still has a Qualcomm modem, so we can only speculate for now. In 2023, Qualcomm announced that it would supply Apple with smartphone modems through 2026, so perhaps Apple is ensuring that it complies with its contractual obligations in a minimal way.

Apple’s C2 modem supports ultra-fast mmWave 5G in the U.S., unlike its previous-generation C1 and C1X modems. Qualcomm modems in the iPhone 12 and newer already supported mmWave 5G in the U.S., so Apple played catch up here.