THE hidden galaxy (not IC 342) ... with a bonus

[wimvb]

A few months ago, Göran @gorann informed me about a rather unusual galaxy that happened to be included in an image that he was working on. pgc 14241 (a nice palindrome) or UGCA 86 as it is called in the scientific literature is situated near the frequently found and imaged "hidden" galaxy IC 342. But unlike its big neighbour, this gem is truly hidden.

The galaxy is situated in the constellation Camelopardalis, some 10 Mly behind the Milky Way and has a red colour as most of its blues are filtered out by dust in our own galaxy. It has an angular size of about 5 arc minutes.

On closer inspection of the image, it seems that I managed to capture a few of its globular clusters as well (indicated in the annotated image).

Technical details:

Telescope SW 190MN with ASI294MM camera

Integration time 66 x 5 minutes for R, G and B, 16 hours in total

Processed in Pixinsight

[gorann]

Outstanding image Wim of a galaxy never imaged properly before (not counting a faint fuzzy in my wide field image)!

[wimvb]

24 minutes ago, gorann said:

Outstanding image Wim of a galaxy never imaged properly before (not counting a faint fuzzy in my wide field image)!

Thanks, Göran. Not imaged by amateurs at least. There are just a handful of images ftom scientific publications and sky surveys.

Edited December 6, 2023 by wimvb

[Paul M]

2 hours ago, wimvb said:

Telescope SW 190MN with ASI294MM camera

WoW, you certainly do some mind blowing imaging with that scope! They seem to be a bit out of fashion now. There is a Youtuber in your part of the world "Northern Panorama" who was using one, with great results, for a while. He's since gone onto reflactors, or some such.; telescopes without mirrors, apparently. 

That's another stunning image of an object I've never heard of and I'm sure there is no point in my wasting electricity trying to find it myself!

The threat title caused me some consternation initially, I imaged IC342 last week, so got confused with your image. I had to go back and read what you'd actually written!

[wimvb]

On 07/12/2023 at 00:25, Paul M said:

WoW, you certainly do some mind blowing imaging with that scope! They seem to be a bit out of fashion now. There is a Youtuber in your part of the world "Northern Panorama" who was using one, with great results, for a while. He's since gone onto reflactors, or some such.; telescopes without mirrors, apparently. 

That's another stunning image of an object I've never heard of and I'm sure there is no point in my wasting electricity trying to find it myself!

The threat title caused me some consternation initially, I imaged IC342 last week, so got confused with your image. I had to go back and read what you'd actually written!

Thanks, Paul. Yes, I know of David Björkén. He used to live in the very North of the country and used the 190MN for his "portable" setup. I guess he found out that the scope is just too big if you have to set up every night, and if you have to clear a foot of snow to do so. Daniel has since moved on to a small refractor and moved to the very South of the country. The 190MN works best in an observatory or semi-permanent setup.

The title of this thread is tongue in cheek. IC 342 is called the Hidden Galaxy, but with all the images of it on social media (not least AstroBin), it can hardly be called "hidden" anymore. UGCA 86 on the other hand, has so far been overlooked, even though it's very close to IC 342.

Edited December 15, 2023 by wimvb

[wimvb]

Reworked the image with the new version of BlurXTerminator. This version does wonders on dodgy stars, and I didn't need to crop the image. I used the combined RGB data as a synthetic luminance.

[WolfieGlos]

Really nice Wim, that new tool is working well.

Did you use the same processing? I note the newer version has more stars - and I think it looks better for it 🙂

[wimvb]

5 hours ago, WolfieGlos said:

Really nice Wim, that new tool is working well.

Did you use the same processing? I note the newer version has more stars - and I think it looks better for it 🙂

Thanks, Chris. I have several versions of the image by now. The image that I have in my first post is just RGB, without synthetic luminance, I believe. The one that I posted yesterday has a synthetic luminance and stretched somewhat differently.