Face on spiral bigger than M101...

[ollypenrice]

I have somehow managed to know nothing, till last week, about IC342 - despite its size, which does indeed make it larger than M101. Tom O'Donoghue arrived, bringing his usual charmed sky, and set about capturing the data while I skived about next to the fire... Tom never messes about so this has 7 hours of luminance and 3 hours per colour, making 16 hours all in. While all this was going on we tried, on two nights, to observe it visually in the Alan Longstaff 14 inch SCT. Whatever it says in Kepple and Sanner and on Wiki, the best we could do was say that we saw one fuzzy looking star (the galactic nucleus) and, quite honestly, almost no glow from the spiral at all. So it's faint.

The galaxy lies in the plane of the Milky Way in Camelopardarlis so it is reddened and obscured by galactic gas and dust and is further obscured (plagued ) by foreground stars. The essence of the processing is to try to hold these down to let the galaxy make itself known. This is my processing and I've done my best. It's a considerable crop.

TEC140, Mesu 200, Atik 460 (at about 0.9"PP) guided by Lodestar and ST80 guidescope. SE France, SQM around 21.6. Filters were, unusually, Astronomik on loan from Peter Woods (Woodsie on here) because my FW is poorly! Cheers, Peter.

Olly and Tom.

PS: Oh, and processed on Deep Blue the new computer ordered after consultation with the IT experts on SGL. Thanks folks, it works a treat. I can feel a new screen coming on...

 

[steppenwolf]

Lovely image, Olly and Tom. Interesting to see the Astronomik LRGB filter set doing a great job as well.

[Craney]

Wow, that is some image.  Well done for the collection and processing.

I am glad to read that you found it a challenge... otherwise my whole kit is up for sale !! 

Here is my attempt   ( D60 unmodded CLS clip, 200pds, 28x2 mins under Sodium enriched Yorkshire skies).....  I'm sure somebody has included it in a seasonal imaging guide along with M31, M45 etc....   that's why I originally went for it, thinking  BIG SPIRAL...... let me at it !!

 

I think you can just see it on the monitor if you use averted vision.  I wont give up the day job just yet.....

Sean.

[gorann]

Yes, very lovely and NEW to all of us that never heard of it before!

[gorann]

8 minutes ago, Craney said:

Wow, that is some image.  Well done for the collection and processing.

I am glad to read that you found it a challenge... otherwise my whole kit is up for sale !! 

Here is my attempt   ( D60 unmodded CLS clip, 200pds, 28x2 mins under Sodium enriched Yorkshire skies).....  I'm sure somebody has included it in a seasonal imaging guide along with M31, M45 etc....   that's why I originally went for it, thinking  BIG SPIRAL...... let me at it !!

 

I think you can just see it on the monitor if you use averted vision.  I wont give up the day job just yet.....

Sean.

Sean,

your image explains to the rest of us why we never heard of that galaxy before. Obviously it is not a target for us ordinary mortals...

Cheers

[MarsG76]

Fantastic result... love it

 

[nucdoc]

Very nice image. I am guessing there may also be Ha regions, have you had the chance to collect any Ha as yet?

 

[wimvb]

Lovely image.

4 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

PS: Oh, and processed on Deep Blue the new computer ordered after consultation with the IT experts on SGL. Thanks folks, it works a treat. I can feel a new screen coming on...

Told you so... 

But this image has very nice colour. Maybe this galaxy should be named "the golden galaxy".

[MeyGray3833]

Very nice, Olly! What a beautiful galaxy! 

[ollypenrice]

7 hours ago, nucdoc said:

Very nice image. I am guessing there may also be Ha regions, have you had the chance to collect any Ha as yet?

 

Yes, it would be a good idea to hit some Ha and we'll do that. However, there are two other targets ongoing in the TEC so it'll be one for a bit of moonlight.

Olly

[swag72]

An interesting target and one that is mighty difficult for the reasons you mentioned.... I never realised that it was quite so yellow / red and more to the point, why. A great target and a great rendition Olly  

[Singlin]

Great piece of work!

Thanks for showing us normal mortals the way.

[Petergoodhew]

Smashing job Olly and Tom.  There's a reason why this is known as the hidden galaxy - good to see it revealed in all of its glory.  I assume the colour is a result of intervening dust?

[tooth_dr]

Stunning. I’d never heard of it until a few images popped up over the past month or so. Love how the dust causes the redness. 

[Mr Spock]

Lovely looking galaxy. Like most, I'd never heard of it until now. Very nice.

[wimvb]

1 hour ago, swag72 said:

... I never realised that it was quite so yellow / red and more to the point, why. A great target and a great rendition Olly  

Never mind, answered already

[ollypenrice]

58 minutes ago, Petergoodhew said:

Smashing job Olly and Tom.  There's a reason why this is known as the hidden galaxy - good to see it revealed in all of its glory.  I assume the colour is a result of intervening dust?

I assume so, Peter. Although the background sky looks quite red it measures as neutral in Ps, presumably because of all that's around it.  There's a nice APOD by Stephen Leshin in which there is more blue to found in the hotter stars. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130718.html  We simply didn't find it - or at least I didn't. Perhaps Tom will come up with a bit more. In the end I decided I rather liked the 'faded antique' look of the colour and I think the TEC did very well for its aperture since most images I've seen have been with larger reflectors.

Olly

[Tom OD]

Hi All,

I'll post my version when its done, but I think Olly has done a great job here. We presume the colour is due to the foreground dust.

Camelopardalis is hard enough to see in the sky, but it has a few jewels in it. There is another big galaxy, NGC 2403 in the constellation which was visible in the 14 inch. That might go on next years imaging list. I was surprised that other than the core, we could see nothing of the IC342 galaxy in the big scope.

We have not any Ha on this, but there at plenty of areas in the image that have emission like areas in them. They could do with a boost I m sure.

Tom.  

[ollypenrice]

I decided to do a full reprocess on seeing Tom's excellent version. I'd try too hard to process this as if it were a regular galaxy and overdone the star reduction and contrast. In this version I've accepted that the field stars are part of the scene and that the galaxy is softer because of the Milky Way's effects. On a whim I rotated it, as well, since I quite liked the three dimensionality itb provided - to my eye at least.

Tom's is here: 

 

Happy new year!

Olly

[wimvb]

Nice. Especially with that golden fuzzie in the background.

Happy new year to you too.

[ollypenrice]

AAARRRGGGGHHH  this one is killing me!  I am now going to walk away from it. Said he.

ly

[Tom OD]

I think I prefer your initial version Olly. Although the rotation has given it that 3D look as you say.

[ollypenrice]

2 minutes ago, Tom OD said:

I think I prefer your initial version Olly. Although the rotation has given it that 3D look as you say.

Oh no!!!! I'll be at it all day again today, now...

[wimvb]

43 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Oh no!!!! I'll be at it all day again today, now...

That's why I kept my mouth (or should that be fingers?) shut. But otherwise: +1 for version 1 with the orientation of v2.

(Sorry)

[johnrt]

Ha ha! When the rains and clouds finally part this is also the subject of my current imaging project. I need to collect some more RGB before I release into to the wild. I'm pleased to see that my image has gone about as deep as yours, but it took me crunching about 16 or 17 hours of luminance alone to get there!  

Happy New year by the way.