The Pleiades - M45 and Mars (Niall MacNeill)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Taurus (Tau) · Contains: 0.94 · 16 Tau · 17 Tau · 18 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 · Barnard's Merope Nebula · Celaeno · Electra · IC 349 · M 45 · Maia · Maia Nebula · Mars · Merope · Merope Nebula · NGC 1432 · NGC 1435 · Pleiades · And 12 more.

The Pleiades - M45 and Mars

I wondered if it would be possible to get the Pleiades and Mars in the same FOV. Looking at the various combinations, it was clear that it would be possible with the large sensor of my Canon EOS 5D mkII and the Hyperstar on my C11 (i.e. f/2).

I took 30 x 30 sec images and 30 x 10 sec images as well as darks, bias and flats. I used a single 10 sec image of Mars to produce the nice ruddy colour of the planet. Interestingly and surprisingly, I could clearly see the movement of Mars against the background stars during the 20 mins or so of the capture. When I say the "movement" of Mars, this is of course the change in perspective due to the movement of both Mars and the Earth in our orbits.

Unfortunately, my DSLR always produces quite severe gradients, despite the calibration with flats. Perhaps the fact that it is more than 10 years old? In any case I made several iterations with Dynamic Background extraction in PI to try and remove them. This did quite a good but not perfect job. The remaining gradients limited how much I could bring out the reflection nebulae of M45.

Nevertheless, it was a fun project and nice to get a record of this conjunction.

Final
Original
B

B

Description: For Geof......a better version of Mars...Lol
Warning this version of Mars was captured near opposition.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4279777
PixInsight job	NEMCYVF5UG589G0PG6M4D53UQ1L9ZLYK
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	03h48m30s.88
RA (top/left)	03h53m09s.15
RA (top/right)	03h53m46s.46
RA (bottom/right)	03h44m00s.23
RA (bottom/left)	03h43m07s.23

Dec (center)	+23°06′15″.8
Dec (top/left)	+24°57′09″.7
Dec (top/right)	+21°21′07″.9
Dec (bottom/right)	+21°14′56″.8
Dec (bottom/left)	+24°50′45″.3

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The Pleiades - M45 and Mars

The Pleiades - M45 and Mars

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