Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Camelopardalis (Cam)  ·  Contains:  IC 342
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IC342 Hidden Galaxy, Alastairmk
IC342 Hidden Galaxy
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IC342 Hidden Galaxy

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
IC342 Hidden Galaxy, Alastairmk
IC342 Hidden Galaxy
Powered byPixInsight

IC342 Hidden Galaxy

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Description

IC342 is large (21'x21') but doesn't appear very bright because its light has to travel through Milky Way dust.  It has an IC catalogue listing apparently because it was too faint to be observed for older catalogues. The Milky Way star field in front of the galaxy also makes imaging such a faint object difficult -- too long subframe exposures bloats the foreground stars and captures light pollution, too short exposures clogs computer storage and adds to the processing burden.  It's the kind of object where you center the scope on its coordinates and accumulate subframes on the first night which show only the faintest trace of the core of a galaxy.  The intervening dust probably accounts for the yellow to red colour of the galaxy, which also sent a strong Ha component.

Processing in Pixinsight fairly conventional LRGB workflow.  New NormalizeScaleGradient particularly useful in the process to remove light pollution gradients.  Because of the Milky Way stars in the foreground, I used the new StarDemphasize Script that automates Adam Block's star erosion technique.

Subframes accumulated  over 11 nights from mid December 2021 to end January 2022; L:139, R:62, G:66, B:63 all LRGB at 180s exposures, plus 28 Ha subframes at 480s.

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IC342 Hidden Galaxy, Alastairmk

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