Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Taurus (Tau)  ·  Contains:  16 Tau  ·  17 Tau  ·  19 q Tau  ·  20 Tau  ·  21 Tau  ·  22 Tau  ·  23 Tau  ·  24 Tau  ·  25 eta Tau  ·  26 Tau  ·  27 Tau  ·  28 Tau  ·  Alcyone  ·  Asterope  ·  Atlas  ·  Celaeno  ·  Electra  ·  IC 349  ·  M 45  ·  Maia  ·  Maia nebula  ·  Merope  ·  Merope nebula  ·  NGC 1432  ·  NGC 1435  ·  Pleiades  ·  Pleione  ·  Sterope II  ·  Taygeta  ·  The star Atlas (27Tau)  ·  And 7 more.
M45 - Two Panel Mosaic, Jonathan W MacCollum
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M45 - Two Panel Mosaic

M45 - Two Panel Mosaic, Jonathan W MacCollum
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M45 - Two Panel Mosaic

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Description

The Pleiades are one of the most popular star clusters due to their overall brightness and size as well. The photons from these bright blue stars are illuminating interstellar dust particles that sit between them and our solar system: forming the whispy-cloudy features in the image.

I chose to image this target for a photography competition whose theme was "Light" and thought: what better night-time target is up right now than M45 to represent light?! (well perhaps a few, but my brain went here.) As a result I intentionally exposed for much longer than I would typically do on this target to really emphasize the abundance of light reaching the viewer.

The data for this image was taken across multiple nights as weather conditions limited and the majority of my time was dedicated to my other targets that required much more integration time. This image is a mosaic of 2 panels with 40% overlap taken with SGP 3 and guided with PHD2. I had to discard a large number of frames due to fairly windy conditions on the nights of acquisition.

As always, feedback and constructive criticism is welcome.

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Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

M45 - Two Panel Mosaic, Jonathan W MacCollum

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