IC 342 is a beatifully massive late-type spiral galaxy, situated in a zone of considerable extinction (Schlafly & Finkbeiner, 2011). Its stellar mass is estimated to be comparable with that of our own Milky Way.
A fairly recent research paper (2010) (
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1003.0321.pdf) using the "tip of the red giant branch" method, which measures distances based on the photometry of red giants and whose accuracy is as high as or even exceeds that of the Cepheid method (Makarov et al. 2006; Rizzi et al. 2007), puts its distance at 12.82 Mly +/- 0.3 ly. In 2015, 16 supernova remnant candidates were discovered in IC 342 via optical observations with Ha & SII filters (
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1511.05307.pdf).
This is one of my favorite galaxies, and my first attempt at imaging it. I hope you enjoy.
CS, Ara
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