M45 The Pleaides

[Trev S]

I have been going through some old data that I have not successfully processed before.  The attached image is of The Pleaides. I find this a difficult subject because of the brightness of the stars and the relative dimness of the surrounding gas cloud. Taken on the nights of 18-02-2021, 24-12-2022 and 21-01-2023.

The Pleiades, also known as Seven Sisters and Messier 45 (M45), is an asterism of an open star cluster containing young B-type hot blue stars that have formed within the last 100 million years. It is in the constellation Taurus and is among the nearest star clusters to Earth and also the nearest Messier object to Earth. It contains the reflection nebula NGC 1435 known as the Merope Nebula, which appears blue in images because of the fine carbon dust spread throughout the cloud. This reflection nebulae was once thought to be leftover material from the stars' formation, but is now considered to be an unrelated dust cloud in the interstellar medium through which the stars are currently passing.

Esprit 80ED with dedicated flattener

ASI1600MM-C camera cooled to -15C

ZWO filters

AZ-EQ6GT mount

Red    80*60s

Green 65*60s

Blue    70*60s

SGPro and PHD2

Processed in AstroPixelProcessor, Pixinsight and Photoshop

Thanks for looking

[Howard Smith]

Beautiful. And to all the other images members are posting.

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Howard Smith

writer | amateur pianist | ex technologist

Note For Note: Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered

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[drja...@aol.com]

Excellent Trevor. It looks like a simple target but I know from my experience that it's very difficult indeed to get results as good as yours.

James

[Tim Coskun]

Yes indeed that's an excellent image of M45 with lovely dust clouds and you have caught the yellow of some of the background stars as well which contrasts nicely with the blue of the M45 itself.  Interesting  that you use Astro Pixel Processor as well as Pixinsight. How do you integrate the two software packages in your process?

Cheers 

Tim C

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From: 'drja...@aol.com' via croydonastro <croydo...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: 11 February 2026 3:19 PM
To: croydo...@googlegroups.com <croydo...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [croydonastro - 8189] M45 The Pleaides

 

Excellent Trevor.  It looks like a simple target but I know from my experience that it's very difficult indeed to get results as good as yours.

James

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[Trev S]

Thanks for the kind comments.

Tim, AstroPixelProcessor is much easier than Pixinsight to use for multi-session stacking, but that's all I used it for in this case. I then imported the stacked files into Pixinsight for final processing.

[Kevin Phillips]

Trevor beautiful image M45 . Love dust clouds. Simple target that some mention, but even so great result. Focus is very important and you got this bang on.  Great effort. Thank you for sharing

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From: croydo...@googlegroups.com <croydo...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Tim Coskun <tcos...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2026 4:34:59 PM
To: croydo...@googlegroups.com <croydo...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [croydonastro - 8190] M45 The Pleaides

 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/croydonastro/VI2PR06MB10682D7D53F63D2AB78FCB815A863A%40VI2PR06MB10682.eurprd06.prod.outlook.com.