M45: The Luminous Pleiades

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Image © 2022 — 2023 Jeremy Likness. All rights reserved.
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The Pleiades, or Seven Sisters, are visible to the naked eye, resolve in binoculars and can be captured by regular cameras. This is the first time I've collected enough exposure to capture the delicate nebulosity that surrounds these beautiful blue stars.

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Telescope:   Stellina
Length:   400mm
Aperture:   80mm
F-stop:   f/5.0
Sessions:   2
Captured:   2021-07-25 to 2021-10-09
Lights:   586
Exposure:   10
Total exposure:   1 h
Ra:   3h 46m 51.9s
Dec:   +24° 14' 8.737
Size:   64.485 x 42.647 arcmin
Radius:   0.644 deg
Scale:   0.687 arcsec/pixel
Related images
One of my favorite winter targets, the Pleiades are easily visible as a bright cluster of stars that resemble a 'tiny dipper.' You can see their faint bluish/purple glow with the naked eye and the Seven Sisters are photogenic and multiple focal lengths. This is a series of broadband RGB long exposures to bring out the subtle dust and nebulosity that surround this young group of stars.
A steady mount and extremely clear skies gave me the conditions I was waiting for to test long (3-minute) exposures. This is just 7 of them. I purposefully increased the saturation to make this an almost celebatory looking skyscape.
Version of M45 reprocessed to reveal the interstellar dust.
40 2-minute exposures in Bortle 5.
The Pleiades is one of the closest star clusters to Earth and filled with bright blue stars.
A long exposure reveals the wispy tendrils of nebulosity that surround the major stars in M45 like a cocoon.
My favorite signal of winter is the magical faint glow that glimmers in your peripheral vision but fades to a blur when you gaze head on. Magnification reveals several bright blue stars burrowing through long filaments of ionized gas and dust. The brightest of these are the famed Seven Sisters or Pleiades.

Objects in frame:

The star Celaeno (16Tau) The star Electra (17Tau) The star Taygeta (19Tau) The star Sterope I (21Tau) The star Merope (23Tau) The star ηTau The star Atlas (27Tau) The star Pleione (28Tau) NGC1432 IC349 Barnard's Merope Nebula Maia Nebula M45
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M45: The Pleiades »