Date: 11/08/2010
Target: M45 - The Pleiades
Telescope: Vixen ED80Sf, WO 0.8x FR
Camera: Canon 40D (modified)
Filter: IDAS
Exposures: 44x300s (3.7h) @ ISO800
Framing: North is Up, 68% crop
Location: Mocksville, NC
Seeing: 2/5
Transparency: 5/5
Start Time: 9:00PM
End Time: 5:00AM
Captured with Nebulosity, stacked using DeepSkyStacker, processed in Photoshop.

Anacortes Telescope Picture of the Day, November 14, 2010.

In astronomy, the Pleiades, or seven sisters, (Messier object 45) are an open star cluster containing relatively young hot blue 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. Pleiades has several meanings in different cultures and traditions.

The cluster is dominated by hot blue 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 alternate name Maia Nebula after the star Maia), but is now known to be an unrelated dust cloud in the interstellar medium that the stars are currently passing through. 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.