Even folks without a telescope should recognize this group of stars, the Pleiades, which rises around sunset on November evenings and is a familiar sight throughout the winter in North America. It is an open cluster of stars between 393 and 449 light years distant according to the latest studies. In binoculars and especially in a telescope, the blue-white color of the cluster's stars appears. This image only captures the center of the cluster. The Pleiades group contains at least 500 stars, some too dim to be caught in such a short exposure through such a small telescope. The cluster is passing through a cloud of dust and gas. This image does show a small bit of the starlight reflected in blue on the dust around some of the brighter stars. Much more reflected starlight appears in the Hallas's much deeper image. My image was take with the 400D through the AT66ED, unguided on the LXD75 mount. Total exposure time was 17 minutes, or 68 x 15". Data was gathered on the night of October 18-19.
2 comments:
That's a nice image! There's a hint of nebulosity there as well which is apparently quite hard to capture. Keep it up!
Thanks, Phil!
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