M45, The Pleiades

10 September, 2024
mono broadband reflection nebula

Table of contents

Acquisition Details

M44 Luminance Red Green Blue Blue
Frames 17 16 17 10 3
Exp. Time 60s 60s 60s 60s 120s
Darks master dark        

Final Masters

Synthetic Luminance
RGB Combined

Description

You might think you recognize this image. And you’re absolutely right!

I’ve posted an image with the same object, the Pleiades (M45), back in September 2022 on Instagram, just when I started my astrophotography journey. Since we’re dealing with rain again and the Pleiades season is upcoming, I decided to put my new Pixinsight workflow to the test on this older dataset.

Astrometry Calibration

RA center 03h47m01s.2
DEC Center +24°07′04″
Pixel Scale 1.561 arcsec/pixel
Orientation 311.827 degrees
Field radius 1.830 degrees

Data Processing

Processing was done in PixInsight only. Steps of the process are listed below:

  1. Weighted Batch PreProcessing,
  2. DynamicBackgroundExtraction,
  3. ImageSolver,
  4. SpectrometricColorCalibration,
  5. BlurXTerminator,
  6. HistogramTransformation,
  7. ChannelCombination for merging a SYnthethic Luminance with RGB data,
  8. StarXterminator,
  9. CurvesTransformation on the background image
  10. NoiseXTerminator on the image. 0.8:0.23 (Denoise:Detail) applied to the background and 0.64:0.30 to the reflection nebulae using masks.
  11. PixelMath for merging the starless image with the stars.

Final Result

Please check the image in full resolution on my Astrobin post.