IC 342 A Hidden Gem (John Hayes)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Camelopardalis (Cam) · Contains: IC 342

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IC 342 A Hidden Gem

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IC 342 A Hidden Gem

IC 342 is a gem hidden behind a veil of dust and stars in the galactic plane. At an apparent magnitude of 9.1 it has a fairly low surface brightness because of it's large size.

[Paraphrased from Wikipedia:] The dust of the Milky Way makes it difficult to determine the precise distance; modern estimates range from about 7 to 11 Mly. IC 342 is one of the brightest of two galaxies in the Maffei Group of galaxies, one of the galaxy groups that is closest to the Local Group. The galaxy was discovered by William Frederick Denning in 1895. Edwin Hubble first thought it to be in the Local Group, but later it was demonstrated that the galaxy is outside the Local Group. In 1935, Harlow Shapley declared that this galaxy was the third largest spiral galaxy by angular size then known, smaller only than the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and the Triangulum Galaxy (M33), being wider that the full moon. (Modern estimates are more conservative, give an apparent size as one-half to two-thirds the diameter of the full moon).

I only had one night to grab this data before going out of town so the exposure time is not super long. The amazing thing was that the galaxy was almost impossible to see in the raw data. The image popped out after stacking and what an amazing and beautiful galaxy!

C&C always welcome.

John

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Cloudy Nights

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	3369412
PixInsight job	KWMONSJMM7582SFGVBGX0JJG2C5O75RC
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	03h46m32s.930
RA (top/left)	03h43m46s.425
RA (top/right)	03h49m05s.839
RA (bottom/right)	03h49m17s.800
RA (bottom/left)	03h44m01s.965

Dec (center)	+68°05′04″.16
Dec (top/left)	+68°14′02″.74
Dec (top/right)	+68°15′54″.34
Dec (bottom/right)	+67°55′54″.56
Dec (bottom/left)	+67°54′01″.48

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IC 342 A Hidden Gem

IC 342 A Hidden Gem

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IC 342 A Hidden Gem

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