Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Camelopardalis (Cam)  ·  Contains:  IC 342  ·  MQ J034334.79+680222.3  ·  MQ J034658.97+680313.7  ·  MQ J034742.17+680151.2  ·  MQ J034748.59+681528.7  ·  PGC 13693  ·  PGC 166077  ·  PGC 166480  ·  WISEA J034915.30+681608.5  ·  WISEA J034923.22+680344.2
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IC 342 - The Hidden Galaxy Collaboration, Andrew
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IC 342 - The Hidden Galaxy Collaboration

Revision title: Crop of IC 342

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
IC 342 - The Hidden Galaxy Collaboration, Andrew
Powered byPixInsight

IC 342 - The Hidden Galaxy Collaboration

Revision title: Crop of IC 342

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Description

Hello gals/guys!  I’ve been working on a collaboration on the magnificent galaxy IC 342 with a fellow imager and friend.  It’s deceptively faint for its size(only M 31 and M 33 are larger), and a challenge to get good colors due to it being somewhat obscured by Milky Way dust, very much like the fireworks galaxy.  I used the TS 130/910/ASI2600mm, Ron used his Esprit 100/QHY268M.  Ron lives under bortle 4 skies(I’m under bortle 7), so the plan was for me to shoot the Ha for the project while he shot LRGB.  I ended up getting almost 16hrs of Ha over 3 fantastic nights, but was also lucky enough to also get a clear night at my parents home(bortle 4) when visiting, so I was also able to contribute to the luminance channel… more on that in a bit.  Ron and I noticed that all the best images of this target had great star colors, with small, tight stars.  So Ron went for short exposures in not only RGB, but also luminance.  For luminance, he managed over 5hrs of short subs.  That’s where we decided the best thing I could do with the clear, moonless night at my parents was to shoot longer L subs to try to capture some of the fainter stuff.  Well, that night turned out to go about as good as one could possibly ask… not only did I end up with 9hrs of data in a single night, but the seeing was excellent for the area, and the stack came out razor sharp.  In fact, neither of our versions needed any sharpening and/or deconvolution!  The final dataset was over 14hrs of luminance, 5hrs of short 120” subs combined with 9hrs of 300” subs.  We basically combined our luminance for the galaxy(which Ron worked very hard on), then used the stars from his stack only, which were small and not bloated like in my stack.  Add 5hrs of short RGB for color, and over 16hrs of Ha to enhance star forming regions, and with that we felt we had enough data to work with.



Exposure data:

Andrew: L - 109x300”
                Ha - 40x600”
                        40x900”

Ron: L - 5h 18” using 60”, 75”, and 120” subs. 
         RGB - 5h 5” using 150” subs.

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    IC 342 - The Hidden Galaxy Collaboration, Andrew
    Original
    IC 342 - The Hidden Galaxy Collaboration, Andrew
    B
  • Final
    IC 342 - The Hidden Galaxy Collaboration, Andrew
    C

B

Title: Brighter version

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C

Title: Crop of IC 342

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IC 342 - The Hidden Galaxy Collaboration, Andrew