The Pleiades (M45), also called the Seven Sisters, is a bright open star cluster in the constellation Taurus, easily visible to the naked eye and known since antiquity.
Click the image to zoom in (4 steps), then again for full view · hover to see it annotated · open full resolutionAnnotated image · click to zoom in (4 steps), then again for full view · open full resolutionSky location chart · click to zoom in (4 steps), then again for full view · open full resolution
The Pleiades (M45), also called the Seven Sisters, is a bright open star cluster in the constellation Taurus, easily visible to the naked eye and known since antiquity. Modern Gaia-based parallax measurements place it at a distance of about 444 light-years, and its stars are young, roughly 100 million years old. The cluster's brightest members are hot, blue B-type stars that happen to be passing through an unrelated cloud of interstellar dust, whose light they scatter to produce the delicate blue reflection nebulosity draped around the stars in long-exposure images. Because its stars are so bright, imaging the Pleiades well requires care to manage glare and diffraction spikes while still bringing out the faint, wispy blue nebulosity surrounding them.
[Source: Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades]
Annotated Image
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Sky Location
The chart above shows where this image sits on the night sky. The yellow outline is its field of view, with the picture itself drawn at its true orientation; north is up and east is left. Click the chart to zoom in, and use "open full resolution" for the full-size chart.
Image Details
| Moon Phase: | Full Moon |
|---|---|
| Camera: | Seestar S30 |
| Optics: | 150 mm focal length, f/5, 30 mm aperture (APO triplet) |
| Filter: | IRCUT |
| Binning: | 1x1 |
| Date: | 2025-12-06 |
| Number of images: | 20 |
| Exposure per image: | 10 s |
| Total imaging time: | 3 min |
PixInsight Processing
- Image Integration (x2)
- Drizzle Integration
- BlurXTerminator (AI deconvolution)
- GraXpert (gradient removal)
- NoiseXTerminator (AI denoise)
- StarXTerminator (star removal)
- Generalized Hyperbolic Stretch (x4)
- PixelMath
- Curves Transformation
