I took this photo of the Pleiades star cluster using my DSLR camera (Canon 60Da) and a compact telescope. I collected 40 individual exposures of 90-seconds each to create this photo. A small star tracker was used (Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer), to compensate for the apparent rotation of the night sky.
The images were stacked in software called DeepSkyStacker, and the final image was processed in Adobe Photoshop. The image has been "stretched" to show the delicate details of glowing cosmic dust surrounding the stars.
The Pleiades has many nicknames, from "The Seven Sisters" to Subaru. This tight collection of stars lies about 400 light-years away in the constellation Taurus and is probably the most well-known star cluster in the night sky.
The image was captured from a dark sky location, a Bortle Scale 2 on the light pollution map. Dark skies help when capturing photos of reflection nebulae and dust without the use of a strong narrowband filter.
More info: astrobackyard.com
The Pleiades Star Cluster
