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 The Maffei
            Group of galaxies marks the outermost boundries of the Local
            Group of Galaxies which includes our own, the Andromenda Galaxy
            and a few dozen smaller members. This galaxy, which is about
            half the size of our own Milky Way Galaxy, lies in a region of
            the sky with extreme dust absorbtion. So dense is the dust in
            this part of the sky, the Maffei galaxies nearby are dimmed over
            6 magnitudes and rendered extremely reddish. IC342 is suffering
            from the same fate, the galaxy normally photograhs as a deep
            brownish yellow coloration, and the blue of the spiral arms is
            all but filtered out. This image has been histogram equalized
            to bring back the original appearance as best as I could, a new
            technique being popularized by myself and Don Goldman.

            
This low surface
            brightness face on SAB class spiral has an integrated magnitude
            of 9.1, spread out over an area of nearly half a degree. Radial
            velocity measurements have shown that this galaxy is tilted 1
            degree to our line of sight. This galaxy is rich in lovely pink
            HII regions. Litterally hundreds can be seen here, the pink coloration
            is the result of a combination of red H-alpha and blue H-beta
            radiation, the color here derived from the original LRGB image.

Instrument:  12.5" f/5 Home made Newtonian
Platform:  Astrophysics 1200 QMD
CCD Camera:  SBIG 10XME NABG with Enhanced Water Cooling
Guider: SBIG ST4
Exposure:  L+HaRGB = 120:20:20:20 (RGB Binned 2x2)
RGB Combine Ratio:  1: 1.05: 1.11
Filters:  AstroDon RGB Tricolor
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing FWHM = 5.0 arcsec (Maxim DL - 10min subframe), Transparency 6/10
Outside Temperature:  60 F
CCD Temperature:  -30 C
Processing Tools:  Maxim DL, Gralaks Sigma, Photoshop, PixInsight, CCDOps Debloomer.
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