12/15/22

 Today's image is one that I am quite happy with how it turned out and it took me a while to do.  I took this image back in mid November but I needed to process it and it took me several nights of tweaking to get a result I was happy with and watching YouTube videos for tips on those tweaks.  This is the Pleiades, also known as The Seven Sisters which is an open star cluster.  In dark areas this cluster can be seen with the naked eye but it can be fairly faint.  I took this image using a 300mm lens and my camera on it's astrophotography setting.  I shot 9 images at F11, 20sec, 3200 ISO which were then stacked together to get rid of some noise in a program called Deep Sky Stacker.  I then worked on it in my Photo program to bring out the gas clouds around the stars.  I am pretty pleased for my first effort on bringing those clouds out, how this turned out.  I am looking forward to redoing my Orion Nebula image this winter.