M45, a 2-panel Mosaic With Hidden Treasures (Rob Foster)

M45, a 2-panel Mosaic With Hidden Treasures

Revision title: M45, Less processed and more thoughtfully combined

The Pleiades (M45, The Seven Sisters) not only form one of the most recognized open clusters in the night sky, but also represent the closest Messier object to Earth at 444 light years. Located nearly on the ecliptic plane, the "mini dipper" asterism contains several bright blue-white B stars in descending order of brightness: Alcyone, Atlas, Electra, Maia, Merope, and Taygeta (the 6 visible to the naked eye) and finally, Pleione, the 5th magnitude 7th brightest star that is very difficult to see with the naked eye given its close proximity to Atlas. Entangled in a diffuse field of dust that is not directly related to the stars in the cluster, the field includes the beautiful blue reflection nebula NGC 1432, The Maia Nebula, which is illuminated by the 4th brightest star in the cluster, Maia (20 Tau). The 4th magnitude star Merope (23 Tau) illuminates The Merope Nebula (NGC 1435, also known as Tempel's Nebula for its discoverer Wilhelm Tempel). Though difficult to identify in this image, IC 349 (Barnard's Merope nebula) is an embedded condensed knot of roughly pentagonal-shaped nebulosity immediately adjacent to 23 Tau, and is better seen in Version D with its highly cropped and high-contrast processing.

Per Wiki, "The nine brightest stars of the cluster are named the Seven Sisters in Greek mythology: Sterope, Merope, Electra, Maia, Taygeta, Celaeno, and Alcyone, along with their parents Atlas and Pleione. As daughters of Atlas, the Hyades were sisters of the Pleiades... the combination of The Hyades and the Pleiades form the Golden Gate of the Ecliptic", with the Ecliptic Line passing directly between the two open clusters, with the clusters forming the "posts of a virtual gate".

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Gate_of_the_Ecliptic

Original
Final
C
D

C

Title: M45, Less processed and more thoughtfully combined

Description: The first version suffered from star bloat and over-processing, and it took trying to identify IC 349 to realize how bloated they had become.
This version went back in processing to doing the LRGB combination of Starless images, then screening in RGB Stars last. Better care was taken to not over-stretch either component.

Uploaded: ...

D

Title: IC 349, highly cropped and high contrast processing

Description: IC 349 could not be seen at all in the first version, but in the Final version, zooming in reveals a subtle hint of a roughly pentagonal-shaped nebulosity immediately adjacent to Merope. This particular view was processed separately with high contrast to better reveal the subtle wedge of nebulosity that is otherwise lost in the halo of 23 Tau. If anything, it is best appreciated as an odd-wedge that otherwise distorts the round contour of the star.

Uploaded: ...

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9088101
PixInsight job	H8CAAGZ5NK1B3EE32YAYAB9OAP91UG2R
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	03h45m59s.36
RA (top/left)	03h40m18s.54
RA (top/right)	03h40m21s.86
RA (bottom/right)	03h51m34s.55
RA (bottom/left)	03h51m42s.87

Dec (center)	+24°12′55″.7
Dec (top/left)	+25°18′34″.7
Dec (top/right)	+23°07′08″.5
Dec (bottom/right)	+23°06′27″.2
Dec (bottom/left)	+25°17′51″.3

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