M44 the Beehive Cluster (RonAdams)

M44 the Beehive Cluster

Because of a full Moon I had trouble finding something to image. I took test images of M104, M108, and M27. I used different iso settings and exposure times but regardless of what I used the

image was still blown out . Before I went outside I checked my star charts for clusters. I was intending on imaging M67. However as it turned out it was obscured by a Bradford Pear tree in my back yard. I didn't want to move my mount because it was already polar aligned and it sits

on some leveled concrete paving blocks that I set in the ground so I wouldn't have to level my mount every time I wanted to image. Next I decided to try M44. I had taken a test image of this object the night before last but I wasn't pleased with the image because of the narrow field of view. I think this object looks better using a scope with a wide field of view. Anyway I had already wasted a lot of time and had accomplished nothing so I decided I would image M44.

In my test image of M44 the background was relatively dark and I could see stars. And if the Moon wasn't bad enough I fought with clouds the entire night. I would try and get an image between the clouds. I did manage to get an image and if you squint your eyes you can kind of tell that it is a cluster. Like the night before last most of my processing time was spent trying to negate the light gradients in the image. My AT6RC was designed to gather light and it certainly

does that. However it is not selective. It also gathers lots of Moon light. With all of that said please enjoy my most recent image of M44.

Original
Final
C

C

Description: My image looked fine on my monitor. However when I uploaded it to Astrobin it was obvious that the background was too black (a result of trying to remove light gradients). I reprocessed the image to try and lesson the black background.

Uploaded: ...

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	2079419
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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M44 the Beehive Cluster

M44 the Beehive Cluster

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M44 the Beehive Cluster

M44 the Beehive Cluster

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