Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Taurus (Tau)  ·  Contains:  11 Tau  ·  12.00  ·  13 Tau  ·  13.14  ·  14 Tau  ·  16 Tau  ·  17 Tau  ·  18 Tau  ·  20 Tau  ·  21 Tau  ·  22 Tau  ·  23 Tau  ·  24 Tau  ·  25 eta Tau  ·  26 Tau  ·  27 Tau  ·  28 Tau  ·  32 Tau  ·  33 Tau  ·  36 Tau  ·  37 A01 Tau  ·  39 A02 Tau  ·  405 Thia  ·  41 Tau  ·  42 psi Tau  ·  44 p Tau  ·  44 zet Per  ·  52 phi Tau  ·  58 zet Ari  ·  61 tau Ari  ·  And 63 more.
The Pleiades in Cosmic Dust, Rikesh Patel
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The Pleiades in Cosmic Dust

The Pleiades in Cosmic Dust, Rikesh Patel
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The Pleiades in Cosmic Dust

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Space is full of dust. When dense clouds of dust are close (relatively) to luminous stars, they scatter enough starlight to become visible. Such a cloud of dust, illuminated by starlight, is called a reflection nebula, since the light we see is starlight reflected off the grains of dust. One of the best-known examples is the nebulosity around each of the brightest stars in the Pleiades cluster. I photographed this cluster on 5th November from dark, Bortle 3 skies in the Lake District. Photographing from such dark skies helps achieve excellent signal to relative to noise (noise is one of the primary challenges when photographing in low light), this allows for the faintest signal – the interstellar dust to become visible, even when the integration time isn’t particularly long.

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The Pleiades in Cosmic Dust, Rikesh Patel