The Pleiades or Seven Sisters (M45)

The Pleiades, or Seven Sisters (M45), are an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot stars located in the constellation of Taurus. It is among the nearest star clusters to Earth and is the cluster most obvious to the naked eye in the night sky.

The cluster is dominated by hot blue and extremely luminous stars that have formed within the last 100 million years. Dust that forms 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 known to be an unrelated dust cloud in the interstellar medium, through which the stars are currently passing. Computer simulations have shown that the Pleiades were probably formed from a compact configuration that resembled the Orion Nebula. Astronomers estimate that the cluster will survive for about another 250 million years, after which it will disperse due to gravitational interactions with its galactic neighborhood.(dixit Wikipedia)

To take this photo i used the following setup:
Scope: TS Optics ts 80/352 astroimaging
Mount: AZEQ6
Camera: Atik One 6.0

The total exposure is around 3 hours in october 2016. As my camera is black & white i use RGB filters to build the chrominance layer, and stack several photo on each filter to maximize signal over noise.

20 photos of 5 min flitering Luminance except UV
6 photos of 5 min filtering Red
6 photos of 5 min filtering Blue
6 photos of 5 min filtering Green

I used the software Prism 10 to manage the capture, the pre-treatment (Removing offset, dark and flat). The stacking and the post-treatment was done with Pixinsight and at the end Photoshop.

I used the software Prism 10 to manage the capture, the pre-treatment (Removing offset, dark and flat). The stacking and the post-treatment was done with Pixinsight and at the end Photoshop.

Technical detail of the photo here: http://www.astrobin.com/267427/

If you want more information, ask me in comment !

I hope you enjoyed it! If it is the case, resteem and follow me to see more astrophotography.