[04 commemorative]

Originally Posted by TripleBlack

From Wiki: The nine brightest stars of the Pleiades are named for the Seven Sisters of Greek mythology: Sterope, Merope, Electra, Maia, Taygeta, Celaeno, and Alcyone, along with their parents Atlas and Pleione. As daughters of Atlas, the Hyades were sisters of the Pleiades. The cluster is dominated by hot blue and luminous stars that have formed within the last 100 million years. A faint reflection nebulosity around the brightest stars was thought at first to be left over from the formation of the cluster (hence the alternative name Maia Nebula after the star Maia), but is now likely an unrelated foreground dust cloud in the interstellar medium, through which the stars are currently passing.

Shot this the night of 11/5/18. 49 5 minute exposures at IS01600 using an equatorial mount and 70mm refractor telescope (f4.7). In camera terms this was like shooting with a 520mm lens. This kind of photography requires stacking the individual exposures and processing them with specialized software. The processing can be done in photoshop but it's difficult to get really good results. I didn't add color but did saturate existing colors; you won't see anything this colorful looking through a telescope.

The light areas outside of the star cluster are "lanes" of interstellar dust faintly illuminated by the stars of Pleiades. Many images with less exposure time don't show this detail so I was happy to see it in mine.

Should mention the Pleiades is very bright and easily visible with the naked eye under darker skies. You can get a nice view with just some binoculars.

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Unreal man......you rule