The Pleiades – M45

This open cluster of stars is visible in the autumn and winter months in the Northern Hemisphere. It lies in the constellation of Taurus and is a prominent group in the skies. Known as the Seven Sisters people thought that they could see seven stars with the naked eye. These days only six can usually be seen. The stars are actually a real cluster and not simply an optical cluster. The members of the group are all moving as one – held together by their mutual gravitational attraction.

Surrounding the brighter stars on the group are regions of nebulosity. These are vast clouds of very low-density glowing gas in which it is thought new stars are being formed.


Photographic details:
The first photograph was taken using an unguided 50mm Pentax lens and a five second exposure. It shows a wide- angle location image of the cluster.

A single star in the cluster has been circled to enable identification on the other two photographs.






The second photograph was taken using an unguided 200mm Pentax lens and an exposure of 2s. At this length of exposure the nebulosity surrounding the brighter stars in the group is not really noticeable.
Since it was unguided a longer exposure would have given unacceptable blurring of the image.





The third image was taken using a guided 300mm Newtonian (f/4) reflector and a 5s exposure.

All photographs were taken using an MX716 CCD camera. The initial images in all photographs were processed using the camera's computer software.

The Moon is shown in the first image to give an idea of scale.

The following map of the Pleiades was made in 2019 using a 120 mm refractor and a Canon 450D camera.