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M45 Pleiades (SQA55 R5).jpg
This is the well-known star cluster, the Pleiades or Seven Sisters, aka Messier 45, in Taurus, here shot and processed to bring out the clouds of faint interstellar dust that enshrouds the newborn stars. It shows how there is much more dusty nebulosity in the area than the usual bright clouds shown in even short exposures right around the cluster stars and appearing very blue here, as they reflect the light from the hot, young, and blue stars.
Most of this dust, including the nebulosity immediately around the stars, is not associated with the formation of the stars themselves, but is part of an interstellar dust cloud in Taurus that the cluster is passing through. The light of the stars illuminates the dust, making this region in Taurus a large area of reflection nebulosity.
The band across the top is catalogued as IC 353, found by the prolific discoverer of all things celestial, E.E. Barnard, in the late 1880s, and visually with a 6-inch refractor. .
I have compressed the dynamic range of brightness in processing, to brighten the faint outlying dust considerably, making it look nearly as bright as the brightest parts of the nebulosity around the stars themselves, while preventing the stars of the cluster from becoming too bright and blown out. So more so than in my earlier images of M45, this image does exaggerate the visibility and brightness of the faint outlying dust for illustrative — and artistic — purposes.
The field of view is 7.8º by 5.2º, so very wide for a deep-sky image. But it puts the Pleiades and surrounding dust in context amid the wider starfield. The pixel scale is 3.4 arcseconds per pixel.
Technical:
This is a stack of 27 x 4-minute exposures with the 45-megapixel Canon R5 camera at ISO 800, on the Askar SQA55 astrographic refractor, at its native f/4.8 focal ratio and 260mm focal length. Incoming earthly clouds spoiled the later exposures in what was to have been a 3-hour shoot, so only 1.8-hours of exposures were used for this s
Most of this dust, including the nebulosity immediately around the stars, is not associated with the formation of the stars themselves, but is part of an interstellar dust cloud in Taurus that the cluster is passing through. The light of the stars illuminates the dust, making this region in Taurus a large area of reflection nebulosity.
The band across the top is catalogued as IC 353, found by the prolific discoverer of all things celestial, E.E. Barnard, in the late 1880s, and visually with a 6-inch refractor. .
I have compressed the dynamic range of brightness in processing, to brighten the faint outlying dust considerably, making it look nearly as bright as the brightest parts of the nebulosity around the stars themselves, while preventing the stars of the cluster from becoming too bright and blown out. So more so than in my earlier images of M45, this image does exaggerate the visibility and brightness of the faint outlying dust for illustrative — and artistic — purposes.
The field of view is 7.8º by 5.2º, so very wide for a deep-sky image. But it puts the Pleiades and surrounding dust in context amid the wider starfield. The pixel scale is 3.4 arcseconds per pixel.
Technical:
This is a stack of 27 x 4-minute exposures with the 45-megapixel Canon R5 camera at ISO 800, on the Askar SQA55 astrographic refractor, at its native f/4.8 focal ratio and 260mm focal length. Incoming earthly clouds spoiled the later exposures in what was to have been a 3-hour shoot, so only 1.8-hours of exposures were used for this s
- Copyright
- © Alan Dyer/AmazingSky.com
- Image Size
- 8150x5400 / 25.7MB
- www.amazingsky.com
- Contained in galleries
- Star Clusters, NGC/IC Objects, Messier Objects, My Latest, Nebulas
