The Pleaides (Messier 45) is a very bright northern asterism located in the constellation of Taurus the bull and is very prominent in our southern skies during the summer months. At a mere 444 light years distant, it is among the nearest star clusters to Earth. I was inspired by many of the wide field images I've seen of this area and was keen to give it a go with my widefield rig consisting of an ASI6200 full frame camera and Canon EF200mm lens. With the resulting 10 degree field of view, it provides an opportunity to capture the extensive surrounding molecular gas clouds. Also prominent is the blue reflection nebula surrounding the cluster which results from the scattering of blue light from the nearby star as it reflects of the interstellar dust.

The Taurus Molecular Cloud (TMC), within which the Pleiades is located, is an interesting study in itself. The TMC consists of primordial hydrogen and helium and great swaths of interstellar dust forming the basis for new star formation. Molecular clouds (or interstellar dust clouds) can appear as dark tendrils in the night sky where they block out light from background stars. Where the dust clouds are absorbing the star light they may appear to glow a red brownish colour in long exposure images.

The data for this image were captured in November/December 2023 during a time of continued unsettled weather which meant dealing with a multitude of sub frames that were affected by passing clouds. Opportunities to discard cloud affected sub frames in lieu of better ones were limited as they were all equally "cloud bombed" by the transient conditions so I just had to deal with it as best I could. At my southern latitudes here in the Central West of NSW, Australia, the Pleiades never gets above 34 degrees altitude and most of the data here were in the range of 25 degrees to 32 degrees which contributed to gradients that I observed in my data. To manage the gradient issues, I used the Normalize Scale Gradient (NSG) process in Pixinsight to help with producing the best possible and less gradient affected masters. The RGB master still required three iterations of Dynamic Background Extraction though to provide a reasonable starting point for processing. Whilst this gave a good starting point, significant noise reduction was required to manage the chromatic noise that remained. Given these challenges, I am reasonably ok with where this image has landed.

The Pleiades is such a prominent object that many stories and legends have been attached to this wonderful star cluster, both in western traditions and in many indigenous cultures across the world. Many of these stories are based around the "Seven Sisters" in the Pleiades cluster as those with good eyesight can make out seven stars when observing from clear dark skies. Most of us should be able to make out at least six stars in the cluster on a good night. More contemporary interpretations can be found also with the adoption of a version of the Pleaides cluster as the logo for the Subaru car company. Subaru is the Japanese word for Pleiades.

Many thanks to @Niall MacNeill in reviewing the draft versions of this image and providing constructive feedback.