Image of the Pleiades (M45) taken on the nights of December 18/24/25, 2022. This is the second target captured during my 'first light' imaging sessions using my new ZWO ASI 533MC Pro.
The Pleiades includes an open star cluster consisting of hot blue B-type stars and associated refection nebulae. It is one of the closest star clusters to Earth. For more information, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PleiadesImaged with a William Optics GT81 at F4.7 (382 mm focal length) using Flat6A II field flattener/0.8x reducer, UVIRcut filter, and ZWO ASI 533MC Pro. Total integration time of ~5 hours: 152 subs at Gain = 100 with an exposure time of 120 sec.
Pre-processed using Pixinsight's weighted batch pre-processing script (WBPP) to perform calibration, debayering, registration, local normalization, integration, and drizzle integration. Post-processing in Pixinsight: background removal using ABE, spectrophotometric color calibration, blur x terminator, noise x terminator, masked stretch, curves transformation, HDR transformation using EasyHDR script, local histogram normalization, color saturation adjustment, and dark structure enhancement.
Rev B: Additional stretching using generalized hyperbolic stretch (GHS) script
Rev C: Starless version of Rev A
Rev D: Processed using my standard workflow for noise reduction (MLT in linear, TGVDenoise in nonlinear)
Rev E: Comparison of cropped section of image versions processed using Blur/NoiseXTerminator (Original) and my standard workflow (Rev D).
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