IC 342

[ollypenrice]

An interesting one. Tom O'Donoghue, best known in imaging circles, suggested that we try this in the TEC140/Atik 460/Mesu 200 imagng rig. We did, and after an initial GoTo we picked up a small galactic core in subs of about a minute but not much sign of a face on spiral galaxy which is actually larger on the sky than M101. Having set it up to do a set of long subs we toddled off to the 14 inch visual SCT to see what we could see. The GoTo is on incredible form at the moment, putting objects centrally in the EP every time. We sent it to IC342.

Initial impression was that there was nothing obvious in the field but, none the less, there was one distinctly soft-looking 'star' which I was happy to regard as the galactic centre. Kepple and Sanner suggest that, in our aperture, we should see this nucleus but also a faint outer glow. None of us could see this despite very transparent skies. So this observation was, essentially, of a soft central star!

Back to the imaging setup and, wow, there really is a huge spiral galaxy there. That will be for a post in the imaging thread when it's done. But what was interesting is that the short test sub and the view at the EP were fairly equivalent. A little nucleus and not much else - yet this galaxy is nearly as big as M33. Incredible.

Olly

[MarsG76]

You could be out another night and the seeing condition might allow you to see the outer spiral arms.... I had situations where I though that the sky was transparent but not much more than a average sight was seen and other rare nights where the detail in galaxies and nebulae was staggering.

Keep observing.

 

[ollypenrice]

9 minutes ago, MarsG76 said:

You could be out another night and the seeing condition might allow you to see the outer spiral arms.... I had situations where I though that the sky was transparent but not much more than a average sight was seen and other rare nights where the detail in galaxies and nebulae was staggering.

Keep observing.

 

Very true.

Olly