Clear Skies 6, 7 and a little bit of the 5th. This photo is the result of 5 hours exposure time collected on 3 evenings. A 4th evening was senseless due to some Sahara dust in Europe.
On two of the three evenings, the Pleiades were my main object. On the first of the three evenings i had a litte spot problem, see clear sky 5.
Astrophoto of the Pleiades
For me, the pleiades are an absolute Must-Have! The used focus length of 600mm paired with the APS-C sensor is not what i call perfect, but it’s still justifiable. The aperture ratio of f=7,5 really needs an expose time of 5 hours but a little bit faster telescope would not hurt to make the pleiades show more of its beautiful reflection nebula.
After 5h of total exposure time i am really pleased with the result. Here the old picture from 2021:
High resolution on Flickr:
This is a new, reprocessed in september 2023, picture based on the data from 2021.
Lessons Learned
The first thing I learned is: More exposure time is always better, even with already 5h collected data. In February 2021, the Pleiades were one of my very first Deep Sky Objects. At this time i was in my try and error phase.
I saw, that my guiding worked pretty well meanwhile and the my single frames with an exposure length of 100s with an ISO of 1250 lead to really bright pictures. In the following sessions i changed to ISO down to 800 and later to 400 and increased the exposure time up to 180s due to the better and better working guiding.
With a look at the result and my point of view, i had some luck, that the moon did not hurt too much.
Technical overview of Astrophoto Pleiades – Clear Skies 6+7.
| Telescope | VIXEN ED80sf |
| Focal Length | 600mm |
| Aperture ratio | 7.5 |
| Erecting Lense | – |
| Filter | – |
| Mount | Skywatcher HEQ-5 |
| Goto-Control | Cartes du Ciel |
| Mount Control | ASCOM |
| Guiding Scope Focal Length | 162 mm |
| Guiding Camera Chip | 4.8mm x 3.6mm, 8bit |
| Guiding Camera Resolution | 1280×960 |
| Guiding Software | PHD2, ASCOM Pulse |
| Dithering | – |
| Camera | CANON EOS M100 |
| Method | focal projection |
| Camera angle | 0° |
| Camera Control | iOS App CC&C |
| Photography Date 1 | 02/28/2021 |
| Moon 1 | 99% |
| Photography Date 2 | 03/01/2021 |
| Moon 2 | 92% |
| Photography Date 2 | 03/02/2021 |
| Moon 2 | 84% |
| Exposure-Time Lights | 186x100s, 5 hours |
| Sensitivity | ISO 1250 |
| Calibrationframes | Flats, Bias, Darks |
| Post Processing Date | 05/22/2021 |
| Reprocessing Date | 09/14/2023 |
| 2021 Stacking, Integration | Affinity Photo |
| 2021 Post Processing Software | Affinity Photo |
| 2023 Reprocessing | PixInsight |
| Image Editing | Affinity Photo |
| Capture Place | Koblenz, Germany |
| Lightpollution | Bortle 5 |
| Scattered light | strong |
