This was my second attempt at capturing the Pleiades (M45). Just so pretty they are hard to resist. Would have liked to minimize the other stars some more to highlight The Seven Sisters, but my image processing skills leave a lot to be desired, I'm afraid.
I'm still blown away (being totally new to this) at what we can see with cameras that we could never see with just our eyes. Incredible.
- Canon EOS Rebel SL3 (250D)
- Askar ACL200 F/4 lens
- 25 x 60 sec each for lights; with darks, flats, and bias frames
- ISO 800 - SkyGuider Pro no Autoguiding
- Processed in Siril & Photoshop
- Bortle 3/4 (Monkton, VT)
Sorry. First upload was too big and then my time to edit the post expired (?). I have to get used to using the Forum. My apologies...
Hi Greg, welcome to the club and the forums. Astrophotography can be a wonderful, if not a bit consuming, hobby. You can do it at many different levels. I'm not seeing your image so you're probably just figuring this out. Do an attachment of a file less than 2MB. You may have to fiddle around with your jpeg file rendering quality to get the right size file.
Terri
Hi Greg, I see your image now. A beautiful image of the Sisters and the surrounding sky. Nice processing as well.. and very clean and nice colors.
Terri
Thank you so much, Terri! I appreciate the comments and your welcome message. 😀
Just to be sure, there are no threads within the imaging forum, correct? For example, a single thread for all Pleiades images, or Orion images, etc. We just start a new Topic for each image we want to upload? Sorry for the newbie question, but I don't want to clog up the Forum with things in the wrong places
I think I see now. There are a few threads started, correct? So if I have an image that pertains to that thread, I'll just post it there. I didn't see anything regarding the Pleiades so I'm guessing I was correct in starting a new thread. I hope so...
Greg
Hi Greg, correct, we don't have a specific place setup to review a specific image. Given we don't have many posters yet, you are not clogging up anything and it's great to see your image posted. Thank you so much for taking the time to share it. I had not heard of an Askar lens previously and had to look it up. It seems to do a fine job and the colors look great. There are quite a few of these short focal length high quality astronomy lenses coming on the market.
Terri
Okay, great! Thanks so much again, Terri.
I have to say, I really love the ACL200 lens. It really was designed with astrophotography in mind and it's almost like a refractor, save for the focusing.
I appreciate your help!
Greg
It's hard for me to resist capturing the beautiful Pleiades asterism each year. Also known as the Seven Sisters and Messier 45 (M45) among other names, it's an open cluster of hot, young stars in the constellation Taurus.
Fun fact if you didn't already know this: six of the stars in the blue reflection nebula in the center of the photograph are used for the Subaru logo, Subaru being a Japanese word meaning “unite.” (You can see the correlation more easily if you look at older Subaru logos before 1980.) So...I felt obligated to add the diffraction spikes!
As usual, the VT wx got me as the clouds moved in after only 30 min of integration. I was going to pick it up after the clouds broke, but then the wind was much stronger than forecast and it was hopeless to try to get more images.
Askar 107PHQ Petzval Quadruplet (native 749mm fL; F/7) with a 0.7x reducer (524mm fL; F/4.9)
ASI2600MC Pro (OSC camera)
ZWO AM5 mount with guiding via ASIAir Plus using an ASI178mm mini and a 60mm F4 guide scope
180s x 10 [Total Exposure 0:30]; with dark, flat, and dark-flat frames
Pre- and post-processed Pixinsight;Final edits in Photoshop.
I was looking at my image of M45 and noticed something that I can't find in any of the Atlases I have. I looked online and noticed it's also in some other peoples' images, but I haven't found that anyone identifies it.
I attached my image with a box around the object at the right of the photo (you might have to zoom to see it). I also attached my image with annotations from Astrometry.net. I also looked at the annotations on my upload to Astrobin.com (CingStars is my handle), but there's nothing there either.
Doesn't look like dust, it looks almost like a galaxy viewed end-on. Anyone have any ideas?
Hi Greg,
It's an edge-on galaxy. UGC 2838.
(The ultimate reference for these sorts of things, in my opinion, is Simbad, which is where I found it identified.)
Very nice image!
Mark
@mark-moyer Terrific!! Thanks so much, Mark. I'm going to take a look at the catalog.
Appreciate the input.
Greg
It's hard for me to resist capturing the beautiful Pleiades asterism each year. Also known as the Seven Sisters and Messier 45 (M45) among other names, it's an open cluster of hot, young stars in the constellation Taurus.
Fun fact if you didn't already know this: six of the stars in the blue reflection nebula in the center of the photograph are used for the Subaru logo, Subaru being a Japanese word meaning “unite.” (You can see the correlation more easily if you look at older Subaru logos before 1980.) So...I felt obligated to add the diffraction spikes!
As usual, the VT wx got me as the clouds moved in after only 30 min of integration. I was going to pick it up after the clouds broke, but then the wind was much stronger than forecast and it was hopeless to try to get more images.
Askar 107PHQ Petzval Quadruplet (native 749mm fL; F/7) with a 0.7x reducer (524mm fL; F/4.9)
ASI2600MC Pro (OSC camera)
ZWO AM5 mount with guiding via ASIAir Plus using an ASI178mm mini and a 60mm F4 guide scope
180s x 10 [Total Exposure 0:30]; with dark, flat, and dark-flat frames
Pre- and post-processed Pixinsight;Final edits in Photoshop.
Beautiful image Greg... back from Florida
Lots and lots of details with great colors.
Terri
