IC 342 behind the dusty veil (Ian Dixon)

IC 342 behind the dusty veil

Revision title: revision k

IC 342

I had some good luck to get in an evening of imaging this past week. I chose this galaxy as it isn't a common target (or at least not as much as some of the more prominent Messier objects). I was surprised at the size of this galaxy, a nice face-on spiral. The light subs, even at 300 s were very dim indeed.

IC 342 is an intermediate spiral in Cam, located in the dust and gas of space close to the plane of the milky way.  Its big and bright but is still known as the "The Hidden Galaxy" and my dead-looking light subs can support the moniker.  The galaxy was discovered by Denning and it was later determined not to be a member of the so-called local group.

The processing of this one presented an interesting challenge in that I was dealing with (what I think is) an artefact than runs through the main body of the image. Que sera sera, I need to investigate this one a bit more deeply, but suspect something wonky in my flats, or that perhaps I went with masters on darks... this may necessitate a full redo for stacking and calibration.

EDIT:  I consulted with my on-site friends -> everyone mentioned the high humidity and also the smoke that was drifting in from a fire far to the west (Yukon) that was tracking east across the prairies for the past 3 or 4 days. That may be the source of my artefact.

I didn't crop this (final version) image - taken with a 120 mm refractor. This provides some idea of its size.

The good: Nights are getting longer, so managed some relatively nice time on this one eg, > 4 hours integration. Imaged this one in an abandoned gravel pit way north and east of the city.
The bad: Nothing really ->

The ugly: Driving the last 10 km home with a 5:15 am arrival, ha ha

Thanks for looking,
Ian

B

Title: Some tweaks and deconvolution

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C

Title: Rescue attempt #3

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D

Title: cropped iteration

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E

Title: version e

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F

Title: version g

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G

Title: version g - corrected (methodology included in the version notes)

Description: I used GAME to isolate the red ring (which I now know was a reflection on the 2600's sensor caused by cheap internally shiny spacers just in front of the camera in the optical train) to decrease the red output. The reason I know that R was messed up was by using extraction in pixinsight. After masking I then applied curves to deemphasize R, ever so slightly, using the red channel. Perhaps this worked? Please let me know what you think. Follow up: I took apart the spacers and painted their internal threads with a cheap dull black Rustoleum paint. In subsequent imaging, this fix worked.

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H

Title: version j

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I

Title: revision k

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	6989445
PixInsight job	U1F8Y0A6C6CV1GOOMW4WL5GWFVJBXG13
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	03h46m25s.553
RA (top/left)	03h54m20s.390
RA (top/right)	03h46m23s.619
RA (bottom/right)	03h38m20s.935
RA (bottom/left)	03h46m27s.525

Dec (center)	+68°04′22″.85
Dec (top/left)	+67°48′37″.17
Dec (top/right)	+68°51′36″.32
Dec (bottom/right)	+68°18′40″.83
Dec (bottom/left)	+67°17′08″.79

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