Bit of a challenge

With the Christmas lights now extinguished and the moon rising late I thought I might try for the difficult galaxy IC 342. This large face-on spiral is only surpassed by M31 & M33 for angular dimension but at Mag.9 is very faint due to dust obscuration at its location in Camelopardalis. The transparency was a bit mediocre so I could have picked a better evening to try it but I think its definitely a target for skies somewhat better than MK can offer. It was barely detectable on the final stack and I had to push the processing very hard to make much of it. Worth a try though. Details: 10" f4.3 Newt. 15 x 10 minute exposures @ iso1600 with CLS in DSS, FIV, CS2 & XAT.