Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Taurus (Tau)  ·  Contains:  Barnard's Merope Nebula  ·  IC 349  ·  Maia Nebula  ·  Merope Nebula  ·  NGC 1432  ·  NGC 1435  ·  The star 18Tau  ·  The star Atlas (27Tau)  ·  The star Celaeno (16Tau)  ·  The star Electra (17Tau)  ·  The star Merope (23Tau)  ·  The star Pleione (28Tau)  ·  The star Sterope I (21Tau)  ·  The star Taygeta (19Tau)  ·  The star ηTau
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M45 Pleiades Seven Sisters ES ED80 480mm FL ASI1600MC-C, steven_usa
M45 Pleiades Seven Sisters ES ED80 480mm FL ASI1600MC-C
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M45 Pleiades Seven Sisters ES ED80 480mm FL ASI1600MC-C

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M45 Pleiades Seven Sisters ES ED80 480mm FL ASI1600MC-C, steven_usa
M45 Pleiades Seven Sisters ES ED80 480mm FL ASI1600MC-C
Powered byPixInsight

M45 Pleiades Seven Sisters ES ED80 480mm FL ASI1600MC-C

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

M45 Pleiades

I've wanted to image M45 for several years. My first attempts were with an 8" scope trying to stitch together at least four sections, which I found very challenging (more so with all the various gradients that imaging from a red-zone suburb causes).

M45 is generally a November to February object for my area. In December I started reconfiguring to setup with an Explorer Scientific ED80. It took a couple weeks (weekends) to work out some kinks across the software, adapters, and I also wanted to finally get OAG working. Then, of course, came the rains. And then on the clears night that I did have, the moon presented itself like a glorious flashlight in the sky. But one evening, February 6th, 2021, 8pm till 11pm, I was able to finally collect data on M45 !

This is OSC with ZWO ASI1600MC-C (a discontinued model from ~2016/2017).

UVIR filter, -10deg cooled, heavy CGEM-DX provided the tracking, all 150x60sec frames were used. I'm overall happy with these results so far, but I do hope another moon-less evening becomes available soon.

Lights 150x60s 1v1 -10C (2.5hrs)

Flats 82x0.14s 1v1 (also at -10C)

Bias 200x0.3s 1v1 -10C

Darks 100x60s 1v1 -10C

PixInsight processing: DynamicCrop, BackgroundNeutralization, ColorCalibration, SCNR, AstrousWaveletTransform, STF->HistogramTransformation, CurvesTransformation, Mask RangeSelection, HDRMultiscaleTransform. Some Photoshop during TIF/JPG conversion.

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M45 Pleiades Seven Sisters ES ED80 480mm FL ASI1600MC-C, steven_usa