The Pleiades | Messier 45

After a long break from doing astrophotography, I decided to spend some time last night and use the new gear I recently got shooting a popular and relatively easy target, The Pleiades. It does appear the lens was slightly off on focus, but whatever. Most people will never pixel-peep it anyways. It all worked great, and it felt good to capture the heavens again.

 

Equipment:

SkyWatcher EQ6-R

Nikkor 500mm f/4 P AI-S at f/5.6

Sony a7RIII (unmodified)

ZWO 30mm Guide scope

GPCAM2 Mono Camera

 

Acquisition:

Taos, NM: my front yard - Bortle 3

68 x 121" for 2 hours, 17 min, and 8 sec exposure time.

10 dark frames

15 flats frames

15 bias frames

Guided

 

Software:

SharpCap

PHD2

DeepSkyStacker

Photoshop

Lightroom

 

I polar aligned my mount using SharpCap Pro. My Sony a7RIII and adapted Nikkor 500mm f/4 P AI-S were mounted on an ADM vixen rail and secured to the SkyWatcher EQ6-R mount. The guide scope/camera was attached to the camera's hot shoe. I used PHD2 to autogude during the imaging session. DeepSkyStacker was used to combine all frames, and then I processed the TIFF file in Photoshop. I stretched the 32-bit file and used Gradient XT on the image. I then made it a 16-bit file and stretched it in levels, then curves. I used the color sampler tool and levels to do my best to help keep colors accurate. I then used my skillset and relied on Astronomy Tools Action Set and Topaz Denoise and Sharpening to give the image a polished look. I brought it into Lightroom to do final color corrections and add EXIF data.

Done