Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Camelopardalis (Cam)  ·  Contains:  IC 342  ·  NGC 1469
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The "Hidden Galaxy" IC342 and a bit of dust, Göran Nilsson
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The "Hidden Galaxy" IC342 and a bit of dust

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
The "Hidden Galaxy" IC342 and a bit of dust, Göran Nilsson
Powered byPixInsight

The "Hidden Galaxy" IC342 and a bit of dust

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This was taken during one night with two RASA 8 & ASI2600MC aiming at the same frame - it helps with two fast scopes when nights are getting short up here at 60°N. Then I fired up the Meade 14" to get a bit more detail in the galaxy. So 400 and 3550 mm focal lengths data mixed, with the long FL data drastically downsampled of course.

The bright yellow star to the right is beta-Camelopardalis, 870 ly away from us, so just in the neighborhood compared to IC342. This is what Wiki writes about it: IC 342 (also known as Caldwell 5) is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Camelopardalis, located relatively close to the Milky Way. Despite its size and actual brightness, its location in dusty areas near the galactic equator makes it difficult to observe, leading to the nickname "The Hidden Galaxy", though it can readily be detected even with binoculars. If the galaxy were not obscured, it would be visible by naked eye. The dust makes it difficult to determine its precise distance; modern estimates range from about 7 Mly to about 11 Mly.

There seems to be a fair bit of rather unstructured Integrated Flux Nebulosity (IFN) in the image although the nebulosity close to beta-Camelopardalis looks more like reflection nebulosity.

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