Open Clusters

M45 – The Pleiades

Easily visible with the naked eye, M45, The Pleiades – sometimes referred to as The Seven Sisters, is a well known and famous Open Cluster in the constellation of Taurus.  IT has been known since ancient times due to its prominence.  The cluster is located between 450-500 light years away and contains several hundreds member stars.  The cluster is quite young by astronomy standards and the cluster is moving through a cloud of gas which is easily visible in images and can been seen visually in a dark sky as well.

M45 - THe Pleiades

Technical Details

Imaged from my backyard in Nottingham on Saturday 9th January 2021 when high to The South.  A meridian flip occurred half way through the data acquisition.  I used my Takahashi FSQ85 refractor and QHY268C One Shot Colour camera.  The image was created with quite a small data set of only 38 x 180s exposures.  

Data acquired with Sequence Generator Pro and processed with PixInsight and Photoshop CC 2021.  Very little processing has been done other than some noise reduction and a stretch into the none-linear state and a bit of vibrance added to the colour.

I have imaged M45 before.  In a close-up setting and also in a widefield setting.

M45 with some of the named stars

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