Duncan's Astro Pages

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You can also see observations of M31, M33, the Milky Way, the Orion Nebulae and NGC752.

Open cluster in Taurus, M45 (the Pleiades)

I took this 4 x 1 minute exposure (at ISO 200) of the Pleiades (or Seven Sisters) in Taurus on the 24th October 2008 using a Celestron NextStar 102 SLT with a Fujifilm S2 digital SLR camera.

M45 observed on the 24th October 2008

Compare this with the 1min. 15s image I took on 29th September 2008 using the same equipment. The frame is a combination of 5 x 15 second exposures at ISO 800 (starting at 23:56 BST). Stars fainter than magnitude 9.5 can be seen.

M45 observed on the 29th September 2008

This open cluster is one of the nearest to us (its distance is about 440 light years) and it is spread over quite a large area of the sky (the full frame is approximately 2.1x1.4 degrees). It is also a very young cluster (its age is about 115 million years).