M45 The Pleiades (Joe Niemeyer)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Taurus (Tau) · Contains: Barnard's Merope Nebula · IC 349 · Maia Nebula · Merope Nebula · NGC 1432 · NGC 1435 · The star Celaeno (16Tau) · The star Electra (17Tau) · The star Merope (23Tau) · The star Sterope I (21Tau) · The star Taygeta (19Tau) · The star ηTau

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M45 The Pleiades

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M45 The Pleiades

I decided to revisit another winter favorite, the Pleiades Open Star Cluster, also known as M45 or the Seven Sisters. My goal was to capture more of the wispy reflection nebula without blowing out the stars. The Pleiades arc high across the night sky this time of year in the constellation Taurus. And you can find this asterism easily with the naked eye by tracing up through Orion's belt through the reddish star Aldebaran until you get to this little dipper-shaped cluster of bright stars. M45 is a collection of hot, young stars that are only about 100 million years old and are just 430 light years from Earth. The reflection nebula consists of interstellar dust and you can also see some reddish ionized hydrogen on the left side of this image.

If you recall your Greek mythology, the Pleiades were the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione. The four brightest sisters, running clockwise from the top are Alcyone, Maia, Electra, and Merope accompanied by Sterope, Taygete, and Celaeno on a diagonal from right to left, below and right of the big sisters. For comparison, Alcyone is 1000 times brighter than our Sun. There are quite a few other stars nearly as bright as the seven sisters in this open cluster. Fun facts: The Pleiades are featured in the Subaru car logo and are referenced three times in the Bible.

I used the best of sixty 60-second exposures shot through my Baader Neodymium filter at 1630mm focal length (0.7X Reducer). I then calibrated these light frames with 20 each dark, flat, and dark flat frames. I stacked the frames with Astro Pixel Processor and post-processed with Photoshop utilizing the StarXTerminator and Topaz DeNoise AI plugins.

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Astrometry.net job	5439648
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