M45 – The Pleiades in Taurus

Telescope: Astro-Tech 8” f/8 Ritchey-Chretien, Orion Atlas EQ-G

Camera: Canon EOS Ra, Baader Mk III MPCC

Filter: Orion Imaging Skyglow Filter

Guide scope: Astro-Tech 60mm, Starlight Xpress Super Star, PHD2

Exposure: 17x60sec, ISO 800, saved as RAW

Darks: Internal (Long Exposure Noise Reduction On)

Flats: 32×1/25sec, Tee shirt flats taken at dusk

Average Light Pollution: Red zone, Bortle 8, poor transparency, haze

Lensed Sky Quality Meter: 18.2

Stacking: Mean with a 1-sigma clip.

White Balance: Nebulosity Automatic

Software: Backyard EOS, Deep Sky Stacker, Nebulosity, Photoshop

After a long night of imaging I had a few minutes left before the first blush of dawn began to paint the morning sky so I decided to grad a short series of image of M45, the Pleiades in Taurus. I was very curious how the RC8 would frame a large target like this and it did a fantastic job. With such a short sequence under poor sky conditions I didn’t expect to catch any of the nebula, but there are few faint wisps of the blue reflection nebula around Merope (lower right) and Maia (upper right).

M45 is currently a morning object relatively high in the east before dawn.