Wednesday, March 6, 2019

M45

Messier 45 (M45), also known as the Pleiades or Seven Sisters, is a bright open star cluster located in the constellation Taurus, the Bull.
The Pleiades cluster has an apparent magnitude of 1.6 and lies at an average  distance of 444 light years from Earth. The cluster is also known as Melotte 22. It does not have an NGC designation.

Messier 45 contains a number of hot, blue, extremely luminous B-type stars and is one of the nearest star clusters to Earth. It is the easiest object of its kind to see without binoculars. M45 has a core radius of 8 light years and its tidal radius extends to about 43 light years. The cluster is home to more than 1,000 confirmed members, but only a handful of these stars are visible to the naked eye. The total mass of M45 is estimated at about 800 solar masses.
  The names of the nine brightest stars in M45 are taken from Greek mythology and they represent the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters – Sterope, Electra, Merope, Maia, Celaeno, Taygeta, and Alcyone – and their parents, Pleione and Atlas.

  This Image is the result of 150 minutes worth of 10 minute frames, lights and dark's.
127mm ES ED-APO, Canon T6i, SSAG, PHD2. Mount was an Orion HDX110.
 Processed in PixInsight and Cs6.

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