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Robert Chozick | all galleries >> Galleries >> Deep Sky Images > Pleiades M45 LRGB
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October 22-24, 2014

Pleiades M45 LRGB

2014 Eldorado Star Party

The Pleiades, or Seven Sisters (Messier 45), is an open star cluster containing middle-aged hot B-type stars located in the constellation of Taurus. It is among the nearest star clusters to Earth and is the cluster most obvious to the naked eye in the night sky. The celestial entity has several meanings in different cultures and traditions.

The cluster is dominated by hot blue and extremely luminous stars that have formed within the last 100 million years. Dust that forms a faint reflection nebulosity around the brightest stars was thought at first to be left over from the formation of the cluster, but is now known to be an unrelated dust cloud in the interstellar medium, through which the stars are currently passing. Computer simulations have shown that the Pleiades was probably formed from a compact configuration that resembled the Orion Nebula. Astronomers estimate that the cluster will survive for about another 250 million years, after which it will disperse due to gravitational interactions with its galactic neighborhood. (Wikipedia)

On the right side of the image you will notice a small galaxy. This is PGC 13696, a 17.29 magnitude galaxy.

Takahashi FSQ-106N Quadruplet Fluorite Refractor
SBIG STF-8300M CCD camera
Baader Vario Finder mounted as Guidescope
Starlight Xpress Lodestar Guider
Astro Physics 900 GTO mount

Astrodon Gen 2 2x2 RGB (13/14/15) exposures at 5 min each
Astrodon Gen 2 Luminosity 1x1 19 exposures at 10 min

Guided with PHD
Captured and Stacked in Nebulosity 3
Processed in PixInsight and Photoshop CS5 full exif


other sizes: small medium large original auto