Pleiades Star Cluster - 20200925

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
On my way back to Colorado and beyond for fall color I knew I had a night or two where I could do some Deep Space Astro photography. It wasn't a huge window since the moon was at 2/3rds to 3/4 full. So the sky at night didn't get dark enough until about 1am on this night and by 5am it was starting to get bright again. But those 4 hours I really made the most of it.

This is the Pleiades Star Cluster. It's actually one that I thought was too boring last winter since it didn't have any red or yellow colors in it and it was just blue. But it's grown on me over the last 8 months, so I knew when I got a chance to shoot DSO again, it was going to be on my list.

So from the Mojave desert, here is Pleiades.

All comments are welcome,

Jim

90 - Light Frames @ ISO 1600 60 secs
20 - Black Frames
20 - Bias Frames
20 - Flat Frames
Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
Process in Photoshop

Pleiades_20200925_dw.jpg
 

escilla

Member
Hi Jim,

very good image of the pleiades. I encourage you to stretch your weak areas a little more.

It is an item that I have on my list.

At other times I tried, but my camera had no antiblooming and the result was not good.

Regards
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Hi Jim,

very good image of the pleiades. I encourage you to stretch your weak areas a little more.

It is an item that I have on my list.

At other times I tried, but my camera had no antiblooming and the result was not good.

Regards
Thank you Jorge! I am glad you liked this.

Thanks also for suggesting to do a bit more stretching to this, I will try that later.
 

Mike Lewis

Staff Member
Very nice Jim! Yes, this is an easy target to underestimate, but like lots of deep sky targets, you get back what you put into it. You are showing some nice reflection nebula detail, although I agree, you might get even more out of that with some careful application of extra masking and stretching. Even these blue objects, without any emission nebula present, can be quite fascinating. My favorite version I have of this is also a DSLR based one shot color image - one of my favorite I have captured that way.

Nicely done!

ML
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Very nice Jim! Yes, this is an easy target to underestimate, but like lots of deep sky targets, you get back what you put into it. You are showing some nice reflection nebula detail, although I agree, you might get even more out of that with some careful application of extra masking and stretching. Even these blue objects, without any emission nebula present, can be quite fascinating. My favorite version I have of this is also a DSLR based one shot color image - one of my favorite I have captured that way.

Nicely done!

ML
I appreciate that Mike. I will work on it more when I get back from Minnesota.
 
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