Messier 45 The Pleiades Star Cluster. The Seven Sisters
Messier 45 Pleiades Star Cluster. Also known as the Seven Sisters, are an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars in the north-west of the constellation Taurus. It is among the star clusters nearest to Earth and is the cluster most obvious to the naked eye in the night sky.
The cluster is dominated by hot blue and luminous stars that have formed within the last 100 million years. Reflection nebulae around the brightest stars were once thought to be left over material from the formation of the cluster, but are now considered likely to be an unrelated dust cloud in the interstellar medium through which the stars are currently passing. (Wikipedia.org)
Technical Information for This Image
The telescope used was a Explore Scientific ED80 APO Refractor on a Celestron Advanced VX mount. This telescope is a very compact unit and is easy to carry out to my dark site and set up. The main imaging camera, attached to the prime focus of the telescope was a ZWO ASI294MC Pro cooled camera which was cooled to -5C. The exposures were 25x120 seconds and 60x60 seconds, and the gain was set to 120. No darks, flats or bias calibration frames were used. Auto guiding was done using a Orion Mini-Guidescope 50mm refractor attached to a ZWO ASI183MC camera which was connected to PHD2 autoguiding software. Capturing was done with Astrophotography Tool (APT) software and post processed with Pixinsight software with finishing touches put in using Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud. Polar Alignment for the evening was done using SharpCap software.
Messier 45 The Pleiades Star Cluster. The Seven Sisters
Messier 45 Pleiades Star Cluster. Also known as the Seven Sisters, are an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars in the north-west of the constellation Taurus. It is among the star clusters nearest to Earth and is the cluster most obvious to the naked eye in the night sky.
The cluster is dominated by hot blue and luminous stars that have formed within the last 100 million years. Reflection nebulae around the brightest stars were once thought to be left over material from the formation of the cluster, but are now considered likely to be an unrelated dust cloud in the interstellar medium through which the stars are currently passing. (Wikipedia.org)
Technical Information for This Image
The telescope used was a Explore Scientific ED80 APO Refractor on a Celestron Advanced VX mount. This telescope is a very compact unit and is easy to carry out to my dark site and set up. The main imaging camera, attached to the prime focus of the telescope was a ZWO ASI294MC Pro cooled camera which was cooled to -5C. The exposures were 25x120 seconds and 60x60 seconds, and the gain was set to 120. No darks, flats or bias calibration frames were used. Auto guiding was done using a Orion Mini-Guidescope 50mm refractor attached to a ZWO ASI183MC camera which was connected to PHD2 autoguiding software. Capturing was done with Astrophotography Tool (APT) software and post processed with Pixinsight software with finishing touches put in using Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud. Polar Alignment for the evening was done using SharpCap software.