It’s been a very cloudy winter so far and I’ve only been able to get the telescope out for 2 nights in the last 6 weeks! I was able to get up to Blue Canyon to try my hand at a difficult target…IC 342. This galaxy is pretty large in the sky at about 20 arcmin (the full Moon is about 30 arcmin), but it’s not very bright (magnitude 9) and is somewhat obscured by the Milky Way. The sky was clear at Blue Canyon, but the seeing conditions (random motion of the stars due to atmospheric turbulence) was pretty poor. The second night was a little better and I ended up with an image that is not my best, but good enough to publish. Maybe some day I try to improve on it!
