IC 342 The Hidden Galaxy (Michael Feigenbaum)

IC 342 The Hidden Galaxy

Here we have IC342 The Hidden Galaxy. This is an intermediate spiral galaxy located somewhere between 7 and 11 million light years away in Camelopardalis.

The line of site to this one is actually close to the galactic equator of the Milky Way and thus is obscured by gas and dust.

This is one of the closest galaxies to us yet not in the Local Group.

This project was delayed by the smoke from the California fires so to finally get some more clear skies to finish this was nice. I enjoyed this project very much and was particularly happy with my luminance data.

So the final product shown here is unfortunately, unfinished. I usually use the staging area here to post my images to see how they look on various different devices and then make some final adjustments to the images before sending them to the public space. I also like to let them sit for a day or two before publishing to combat what I call image fatigue. You know, when you are working on an image so long you lose perspective and the ability to actually "see" it.

I keep my data and projects on external hard drives. This as I learned, can be a mistake. I somehow dropped my current 1tb external disk from about 1/2 meter and now, it won't log up and just clicks. I gave it to one of my IT boys at the office and they told me that it was toast. Nearly a years worth of projects and all my calibration files.

Well, live and learn I guess... It'll be SSDs and cloud storage going forward.

In this image, I did manage to get a lot of good quality Ha data too. I was trying to find the right level of this and in this final image. I think I could have brought the Ha up a little bit.

Anyway, this is what I have to share and I hope you like it!

Clear Skies and of course, all comments/criticism are welcome!

Final
Original
E

Arizona Astrophotographers
AstroBin Platform open discussions community forum
HyperStar Lens Astrophotography
Cloudy Nights

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	3853907
PixInsight job	T0I0XHNS8VGJTFXWXPTWFUVE3O37HBNH
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	03h46m54s.492
RA (top/left)	03h47m46s.720
RA (top/right)	03h39m33s.160
RA (bottom/right)	03h46m06s.685
RA (bottom/left)	03h54m02s.485

Dec (center)	+68°05′18″.26
Dec (top/left)	+68°50′27″.48
Dec (top/right)	+68°25′06″.48
Dec (bottom/right)	+67°20′05″.38
Dec (bottom/left)	+67°44′17″.48

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):