Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Taurus (Tau)  ·  Contains:  16 Tau  ·  17 Tau  ·  18 Tau  ·  19 Tau)  ·  19 q Tau  ·  20 Tau  ·  21 Tau  ·  22 Tau  ·  23 Tau  ·  24 Tau  ·  25 Tau)  ·  25 eta Tau  ·  26 Tau  ·  27 Tau  ·  28 Tau  ·  Alcyone  ·  Asterope  ·  Atlas  ·  Barnard's Merope Nebula  ·  Celaeno  ·  Electra  ·  IC 349  ·  LBN 770  ·  LBN 771  ·  LBN 772  ·  M 45  ·  Maia  ·  Maia Nebula  ·  Merope  ·  Merope Nebula  ·  And 21 more.
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Messier 45 - Pleiades, Stefan Pfleger
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Messier 45 - Pleiades

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Messier 45 - Pleiades, Stefan Pfleger
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Messier 45 - Pleiades

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Description

Pleiades...This target has been nothing but trouble for me everytime i shot it!!

The first time i tried this target, I was shooting from home, Bortle 6 roughly, maybe a 5. I was still very much a beginner to this hobby then. I looked for easy targets to shoot and thus stumbled onto M45...
Its easy theyd say...
Well...After my experiences, I'd argue otherwise. The first night, almost 2 years ago now... I shot this thing like i mentioned above from home. The resulting image, partially due to my gear, but also due to my lack of knowledge and too short integration time showed almost none of the nebula. Very faintly i could a hint of blue.
Naive me blamed the lightpollution of course. So the next time I tried this targer, I went into a Bortle 3. I figured...this time i'd absolutely nail it...
Well...Wrong again. This time, I had awful polar alignement. None of my subs came out sharp. Although I finally saw some of the blue nebula, it was still quite a mess.
Eventually I realised, that my star tracker was way undermounted for this kind of focal length. When I bought my Ioptron Skyguider Pro last year, I decided to reshoot this targer eventually, once the time was right for it in the sky. Little did I know, that this little tracker would absolutely hook me to this hobby, because only half a year later, I already decided to buy my first ever goto mount. The CEM 26. This mount also was only trouble ever since I bought it. However, this thing is a story for its own...I did however manage to handle it eventually!
This time, I finally achieved my dream of capturing a good image of this target! Althought, like i said before...I always ran into trouble with this object. This time, it thankfully was only very annyoing gradients to take care off. I think i managed them decently. 

For my lightpolluted backyard, I'm very pleased with this result. Should i reshoot it with my newton? Id imagine it will look amazing...

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Messier 45 - Pleiades, Stefan Pfleger