IC 342, The Hidden Galaxy, a neighbor 11 Mly away in Camelopardalis,
shows severe extinction and reddening effects due to intervening
gas and dust so close to the celestial equator.
Hover over the picture for an annotated version
Date: 27 August 2022
FOV: cropped to 60' × 40'; the apparent size
of IC 342 is about 21'
Rotation: 0.201°
Telescope: Stellarvue SVX102T + SFFX-1 flattener (714mm, f/7)
Guiding: ZWO ASI120MM mini mono guide camera,
Stellarvue F050G 50mm guide scope
Computer: ASIair pro Raspberry Pi
Mount: iOptron CEM40
Camera: ZWO ASI071MC Pro Cooled (-10°C) Color CMOS with gain 240
Filter: Baader Light Pollution Moonglow filter with IR cut
Pixel size: 4.78 μm
Resolution: 1.337 arcsec/pixel
Stacking: Seventy-five 240 second frames using Deep Sky Stacker
Calibration: 20 flats, 20 bias, and 20 darks
Total Time: 5 hours
Processing: Pixinsight – SPPC, DBE, SPCC, BlurXT, NoiseXT, DynCrop → Linear
MStr, GHS, HST, PMath MStr + GHS + HST → Stars, Sat,
StarXT, MStr, GHS, HST, PMath MStr + GHS + HST → Starless,
HDRMST6PhLm, PMath ~(~Stars*~Starless) → Blend, scale
Location: Darling Hill Observatory near Vesper, NY
