An image of the Pleiades, M45, highlighting the cluster's dusty surroundings. From Wikipedia:
The cluster is dominated by hot blue and extremely luminous 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 alternative name Maia Nebula after the star Maia), but is now known to be an unrelated dust cloud in the interstellar medium, through which the stars are currently passing.
Click image for higher resolution versions and acquisition details.
Geeze Andy clean your optics will ya? You got all that hazy crap obscuring the beautiful star cluster!
Awesome capture of the paint brush nebulosity- I'm not sure if I've seen it's equal. Interesting to note the nebula is unrelated to the star cluster...
Wow. Did you notice, from what I can tell, that you picked up the 16th magnitude Spiral Galaxy UGC 2838 in the lower left hand corner? Holy cow!
UGC 2838
UGC2838.jpg (84.71 KiB) Viewed 1940 times
Ron B.
T5i/700D, ASI1600MM-C, ASI120MM, ASI174MM, XAGYL 7x36mm FW
Astronomik Deep-Sky(RGB), CLS, Ha, OIII, SII
SV60EDS 60mm f/5.5 APO
AT65EDQ 65mm f/6.5 ED Quadruplet
SW ProED 100mm f/9.0 Doublet APO
C8 EdgeHD, AT130EDT
AVX, iEQ45 Pro
This is so cool! I was out last night working on the March LVAS challenge object and when I was done with it I went on tour. I spied the Pleiades just over the trees to the west and put my widest field ocular into the diagonal of the 5" refractor I was using and enjoyed one of the best views I've ever had of this spectacular cluster. And then I come in and see this. Perfect timing!
"The purpose of life is the investigation of the Sun, the Moon, and the heavens." - Anaxagoras
