Can the supernova remnant SN 1572 be observed by amateur astronomers? The SN 1572 remnant, also called Tycho's supernova remnant, is beautiful in X-ray images. It seems to be rather dim in visible light. Are there any amateur photographs of this object? How long are the exposure times needed to get a nice picture?
As you say, SN 1572 is not very bright in the optical.  There are some H&alpha; regions that have been observed with world-class optical telescopes, but they do not look like the X-ray and infrared images that you normally see.  In fact, images from the Palomar Optical Sky Survey 2 (with a limiting magnitude of ~22) do not reveal any nebular emission from this object at all:



Therefore, the optical emission must be fainter than 22nd magnitude.  I do not think there are amateur photographs of an object this faint and I believe a CCD on an amateur telescope would saturate from noise before revealing any of the nebular emission.