Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Taurus (Tau)  ·  Contains:  11 Tau  ·  11.10  ·  11.28  ·  11.52  ·  115 Thyra  ·  13 Tau  ·  13.26  ·  13.52  ·  14 Tau  ·  14.23  ·  14.37  ·  15.44  ·  164 Eva  ·  17 Tau  ·  19 Tau)  ·  20 Tau  ·  23 Tau  ·  25 Tau)  ·  32 Tau  ·  324 Bamberga  ·  33 Tau  ·  36 Tau  ·  38 Per)  ·  388 Charybdis  ·  40 o Per  ·  41 Tau  ·  42 n Per  ·  42 psi Tau  ·  44 Per)  ·  44 p Tau  ·  And 442 more.
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M45 (Pleiades) and NGC1499 (California Nebula) in sea of dust, Ben Hayes
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M45 (Pleiades) and NGC1499 (California Nebula) in sea of dust

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M45 (Pleiades) and NGC1499 (California Nebula) in sea of dust, Ben Hayes
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M45 (Pleiades) and NGC1499 (California Nebula) in sea of dust

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Description

I found myself in the backyard last evening and I could see the Pleaides dangling next to Mars in the western night sky.  A wonderful sight.  I ran back inside and rigged up an old Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 lens onto an ASI294MC one-shot color camera, and placed them on the AVX mount that remained in the backyard from the previous night.  Connected to 12V power and to a Raspberry Pi4 running Stellermate, stopped the lens down to f/4, set the exposure (I still call it "shutter speed") to 240s, and proceeded to rip through 28 frames before the target sunk below the trees.  After removing some terrible light pollution gradients, this is what I ended up with.

Imaging Train.  For anyone who enjoys the gear side of things, here's a photo of the super-simple and lightweight imaging train used to capture this image: ASI294MC pro camera, ZWO filter drawer with 2" UV-IR Cut filter, Nikkor AI 50mm f/1.4 lens.  The dovetail on top of the ring mount is for a 120mm guide scope, but I didn't use it for this image.  Not sure if guiding with a 50mm lens would help or not.    Used a Raspberry Pi4 running StellarMate to capture the sequence.  It was windy, but that didn't seem to bother this light weight rig on a Celestron AVX mount.

ASI294+Nikkor50mmf:1.4lens.jpeg

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M45 (Pleiades) and NGC1499 (California Nebula) in sea of dust, Ben Hayes