M45Consisting of over a thousand stars, the Pleiades star cluster just happens to be passing through a cloud of interstellar dust which provides the stunning backdrop to the brilliant blue glow of the young, short-lived, hot blue main stars. Six of these are visible to the naked eye, and a seventh star of variable brightness is sometimes visible as well. Known by many names by many cultures, and fiendishly difficult to process, as it turns out!
I attempted to image M45 late last year, and ran into clouds in December before I could gather more than a few hours -
I gave it a shot, though. In early 2024, I moved my telescope to a different location in our backyard, and had a few lucky nights to add another 5 hours total.
Processing was a pain - despite tripling the integration time, I had difficulty dealing with the very noisy but still present background dust. It's possible that conditions were poor in the additional data, or it might be time for me to consider a UV/IR cut filter instead of the L-Pro, I'm not sure. I processed this image countless times from scratch before deciding on a version I could post. I think a wider FOV (mosaic?) and UV/IR cut filter might be the way to go next year, but this will have to do for now.
Clear skies to you all, and thanks for having a look at my image!
REFERENCE:Stellar jewels: the Pleiades - Royal Museums, Greenwich.
https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/what-are-pleiades 
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