When my wife and I first met we looked at the night sky (where else…), admiring the Pleiades together and it became “our” constellation. When I started with astrophotography this object was high on my wish list and I have made several attempts to photograph it over the years this one being the most recent.
The Pleiades also called the Seven Sisters is a star cluster with hot blue luminous stars in a dust cloud in the interstellar medium, and the dust reflects blue light from the stars. The stars forming the Pleiades are clearly visible with the naked eye and lies relatively close to earth, only 444 light years away. It is best seen in the eastern winter night sky.
To take this image I used the “nebula rig” with RedCat 51 telescope and ZWO 2600 MM camera. I used the luminance, red, blue and green filters to produce an LRBG image. In total 175 x 5 minute exposures (15 hours) were obtained over three nights, half of them with the luminance filter to capture as much nebulosity as possible.
Starless luminance filter image
A starless stacked and stretched luminance filter image of the Pleiades showing the vast amount of interstellar dust floating around the Seven Sisters. This image was then integrated with the R, G and B images for coloring and finally the stars were put back.