M45 — Pleiades
Open Cluster in Taurus
About
The Pleiades, also called the Seven Sisters, an open cluster in Taurus about 444 light-years away and the nearest Messier object to Earth. Its hot blue stars light up an unrelated dust cloud that the cluster is passing through, not dust left from its formation.
Imaging tips
- About 110′ across: 220–370 mm on APS-C, or a wide lens. The Merope Nebula, 16.6′ from the centre, falls in the same field.
- Exposures on the opened pages ranged from 1 to 8 minutes per sub (3 minutes most often), mostly with DSLR or one-shot colour cameras; totals ran from 1 to about 5 hours.
- At 50 mm or wider, one write-up offsets the cluster to bring the California Nebula into frame, with dust lanes between the two.
- At wide-field scale the one challenge a write-up names is revealing the dark dust lanes; it warns that background extraction can erase nebulosity if sample points land on it.
- Best in November and December.
Facts
- Size
- 110′
- Magnitude
- 1.6
- Coordinates
- RA 3h 47.3m, Dec +24° 7′
- Framing, APS-C
- 220–370 mm
- Framing, full frame
- 340–560 mm
- Best months
- Nov, Dec
- Peak altitude
- 64° from 50°N, 79° from 35°N
Nearby
- vdB23 · 2.6′ away
- vdB22 (Merope Nebula) · 16.6′ away
- vdB21 · 24.8′ away
- vdB20 · 32.9′ away