On Christmas Night, we had some early clear skies that gave way to clouds rolling in from the south. Before that happened, I was able to image IC342, the sprawling island universe pictured above. Normally, something of this size and brightness at 10 million light years away would be easily seen, but it happens to lie in the plane of our own Milky Way galaxy. So, we are viewing it through the dust, stars and gas of our own galaxy which renders it much more difficult to view. Think cosmic light pollution. Normally, light pollution is the arch-enemy of astronomy, but when its coming from our own galaxy it creates quite a sight!
Photo Details
December 25, 2016
Orion 8" Astrograph on VX Mount
SBIG STF-8300C Camera
Baader MPC Mark III Multi-Purpose Coma Corrector
Skyglow filter
27 subframes at 3 minutes/frame
Total Exposure Time = 1 hours 21 minutes
Image Acquisition in CCDOps
Image Stacking in Deep Sky Tracker
Image Processing in PhotoShop
Image Acquisition in CCDOps
Image Stacking in Deep Sky Tracker
Image Processing in PhotoShop
