Why it's so hard to see much in Octans

[Weltevreden SA]

I came across this web image of dust cirrus in Octans (http://www.astro-austral.cl/imagenes/nebulae/Octans_dust/info.htm).

Thanks to astro-imager José Joaquín Pérez who observes from Valle del Equi, Chile, for this. No coordinates or image scale given, but this patch of dust extinction clearly extends more widely than this image. I've been shrugging my shoulders over Octans for awhile; now I know why.

I looked around arXiv, SAO, and Google Scholar for web links to large-scale dust extinction maps of the Southern skies. Lots of small regions or object associations, but no large maps. Anyone have any pointers?

=Dana in SA

[jjjnettie]

Gotta love those dusty bits.
I hope someone can shed light on it's exact location.
If not, it might be worth while capturing a wide field (camera lens) of the whole constellation and tracking it down that way.

[mithrandir]

Solved by astrometry.net here (http://live.astrometry.net/status.php?job=alpha-201209-14993892).

"Your field is at (RA, Dec) = (290.679, -78.763) degrees
and spans 3.70 x 2.46 degrees ."

or in HMS,DMS
(RA, Dec) center (H:M:S, D:M:S):(19:22:42.956, -78:45:46.127)