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There simply is
no more spectacular assemblage of hot blue stars, and dust anywhere
in the sky. The Pleiades or Seven Sisters Cluster in Taurus is
enveloped in a sky blue reflection nebula shaped by interstellar
magnetic fields and the brightness of nearby stars in the cluster.
Listed at magnitude 1.2, it is also the brightest star cluster
in the sky and spans over 2 degrees in diameter.
This is my deepest shot
yet of this object, the extreme blue sensitivity of the 10D far
exceeded what I was able to accomplish with my cooled ST8i on
the same telescope.
Processing: Raw conversion
in Photoshop CS, Six five minute exposures were aligned and summed
in Maxim DL and converted to a 16 bit image. Curves, color balance,
and noise reduction in PixInsight full version.
Final Note: This field
was challenging to color balance due to the fact that the ONLY
neutral pieces of sky were small isolated dark patches inside
the nebula. All four corners are rich with blue nebulosity, which
extends over a large distance beyond the frames edges.
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