The Pleiades in LRGB (Kepler 4040) (Richard Francis)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Taurus (Tau) · Contains: 16 Tau · 17 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 · Merope · Merope Nebula · NGC 1432 · NGC 1435 · Pleiades · Pleione · Sterope II · Taygeta · And 8 more.

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The Pleiades in LRGB (Kepler 4040)

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The Pleiades in LRGB (Kepler 4040)

This image contains less than 2 hours of data. I want to take much more to reveal more details of the nebulosity, but it is now getting quite late in the season for the Pleiades. I might just be able to squeeze an hour per night, if it clears up enough!

What's more it is only a 12 bit image. For those who don't know the Kepler cameras, they have 12 bit CMOS sensors, and read the sensor twice with different gains, so that post-processing can reproduce a 16 bit image. I haven't got that working properly yet -- I have previously used PixInsight's HDR composition process to merge the High-Gain and Low-Gain images, but as this is a work in progress I shortened the workflow and used the High Gain only.

I'm seeing some slight elongation of the (smaller) stars, which I suspect is "tracking" since I checked collimation recently. These are 60-second exposures with no guiding.

The image shows the Pleiades open star cluster, M45, which is rather close (relatively speaking!), at about 400 light-years. It's bright in Winter skies but is rapidly disappearing into the dusk twilight now that Spring is almost on us. This cluster of stars are all linked and are moving together through space. The group is also called the Seven Sisters and although readily visible, distinguishing 7 individual stars with the naked eye is a challenge.

However, there are actually over 1000 stars in the group, of different sizes and colours, but the brightest members are hot, blue-white B-type stars. The cluster is well-known photographically (though invisible to the naked eye) for the reflection nebula in which it is embedded, which is in fact a dust cloud in the inter-stellar medium through which the cluster is currently moving.

UK Astro-Imaging
Astrophotographes (France)

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4298230
PixInsight job	VC63Z95SJIUGYZGQ6DME1MA46UFSJB80
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	03h46m59s.999
RA (top/left)	03h49m20s.635
RA (top/right)	03h44m38s.681
RA (bottom/right)	03h44m40s.285
RA (bottom/left)	03h49m19s.988

Dec (center)	+24°04′46″.94
Dec (top/left)	+24°36′46″.99
Dec (top/right)	+24°36′39″.34
Dec (bottom/right)	+23°32′36″.90
Dec (bottom/left)	+23°32′44″.78

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The Pleiades in LRGB (Kepler 4040)

The Pleiades in LRGB (Kepler 4040)

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The Pleiades in LRGB (Kepler 4040)

The Pleiades in LRGB (Kepler 4040)

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