Astrophoto: Mars and Pleiades – Messier 45 – 01/23

In January 2023, Mars was on its loop and at the loops end, on the 11th of January, Mars came very close to the Pleiades.

A Pleiades – Mars – Astrophoto was in my mind for quite some time now. I wanted a somewhat wider field. But since I still do not own a full format camera, this FoV is really ok – at least for now.

It was cloudy all the time, for several weeks. But the 11th of January let me see stars. And it was windy … and there were high clouds every now and then … and real clouds were on the way. And my guiding configuration did not want to work – i changed some stuff and did’nt test.

Due to this situation, i started collecting photons without guiding and used 45s exposures. I could only use 70 out of 270. Too many high clouds I could not see with the naked eye.

The result is one with a lot of compromises, but since there is no 2nd chance for the moment, i am still very happy with it.

Reprocessing

I reprocessed this astrophoto in december 2023. Here is the old result:

High resolution on Flickr:

Technical overview