One more M45 The Pleiades

A stack of 49 lights 2min ISO800 or 1hr 38min combined time. 25 Darks. 80mm f/5 refractor. Canon 50D. Processed in Photoshop using levels and curves. I also got to try out a field flattener which seems like it really helped in the corner stars.
Hope you like it.

90% of everything you just said makes no sense to me whatsoever, but I sure do like the picture! lol

You grabbed a lot in those 38 minutes Jeff. The curvature is visible but I've seen much worse. You can always cop away the outer 10 percent or so. Your color balance is leaning very blue and a bit high in saturation but the details/focus looks dead on. Really nice work.

Nice picture, you did get a lot in the amount of time given. But I agree that it is leaning it bit too much toward the blue side. What kind of refractor are you using?

Nighthound wrote in post #11081466
You grabbed a lot in those 38 minutes Jeff. The curvature is visible but I've seen much worse.

I notice the curvature more in the upper left corner, I wonder if there isn't a little flexure going on here.

Thanks guys. The total time was 1hr and 38 min. I was having a really hard time with the colors. I tried selecting the stars to a different layer and working on it that way. This is one of the toughest pictures I've had as far as processing goes.

If anyone wants to have a go at the resulting tif file after stacking feel free to download it. About 90mb I think. I'd love to see what can be done with it.

Tim - I used the Vixen 80mm f/5 Achromat. Normally I use it as a guidescope.
Here's the link:
www.seivertfamily.com/​POTN/M45_2010-10-07.tif

digidiva wrote in post #11080684
90% of everything you just said makes no sense to me whatsoever, but I sure do like the picture! lol

Ha Ha! Yeah, sometimes I feel just as baffled.

Jeff wrote in post #11081904
Tim - I used the Vixen 80mm f/5 Achromat. Normally I use it as a guidescope.
Here's the link:

That would explain the rich blue. Nevertheless, considering it is a short focal length achromat it does pretty well, I've definitely seen much much worse results with achromats.

Jeff wrote in post #11081904
Thanks guys. The total time was 1hr and 38 min.

Ah, sorry I misread the exposure time. M45 is a very difficult process. So much of the nebulosity falls at the lowest end of the histogram. It does take a bit of extra care to hold it all. You've got good data here, keep adding more. When you reach the 2.5 - 3 hour mark things really start poppin'.

This is by no means 100% color accurate but this is the direction I would aim for in color. I cropped your image and stretched it a bit and found some more detail in the low end as well.

nice image

I have a superduper noob question for you all. Since it takes dozens of photos stacked in specific software to "clean-up" and render the nebulae... if one was in outer space, can one visually see the vast expanse of these colorful nebulae as well (given a powerful-enough telescope to focus in).

I've always wondered if this was more-or-less a digital creation (in that our naked eye isn't capable of seeing them) or are these photos realistic renderings of what one would see beyond the atmosphere?

Sorry for the noob question. But an inquiring ignoramous (*me*) would like to know.

jwcdds wrote in post #11086821
I have a superduper noob question for you all. Since it takes dozens of photos stacked in specific software to "clean-up" and render the nebulae... if one was in outer space, can one visually see the vast expanse of these colorful nebulae as well (given a powerful-enough telescope to focus in).

I've always wondered if this was more-or-less a digital creation (in that our naked eye isn't capable of seeing them) or are these photos realistic renderings of what one would see beyond the atmosphere?

Sorry for the noob question. But an inquiring ignoramous (*me*) would like to know.

Our eyes are not capable of seeing light at such low levels, that combined with incredible distances make many of these objects appear as dim foggy shapes through a modest telescope in average dark skies. The darker the skies and the larger the aperture of the telescope get the more clearly the structure/detail of these objects become to our eyes. What you see in multiple exposures combined or stacked is an accurate depiction of what the nebula or galaxy appears, just much more vivid and detailed than our eyes can provide. The ongoing loss of dark skies for most people makes appreciating/observing and imaging deep sky objects more and more challenging. Extreme dark skies make observing and imaging much more enjoyable and through a large telescope deep sky objects can be quite stunning but never as colorful as the photos that we see of many minutes or hours of compiled exposure time.

So in short, hundreds (if not thousands) of years from now, assuming man builds a space ship carrying people to another galaxy, the passengers looking out a window into deep space still won't be able to see these rich colors w/ their naked eyes?

I guess for me, it's a question of realism. Granted just because my eyes can't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. For example, if I see a photo of a beautiful sunset captured in Hawaii, I can imagine such a sunset to be relatively *real*.

I am curious whether if I was in outer space, would I be able to see what some of you are able to produce/capture.

I think it's safe to assume that if we could travel closer to the objects they would increase in brightness. It's hard to fathom the scale of some of these objects, some are as far or farther across as they are away from us. When light travels billions or trillions of miles through space it doesn't do so unimpeded. It travels past stars and other objects that can change the light to some degree and then it passes through Earth's atmosphere, so the question is does it change enough to make it drastically different to our eyes than it was in its original form.

Nebula are hydrogen and other gases mixed with dust and particles. The light we see is the result of heating and exciting of the gas that occurs usually from the source of one or multiple stars within. It's very much like the way a neon light functions. So I would imagine the closer we got to this glow the larger and therefore the more bright it would appear.

jwcdds wrote in post #11087239
So in short, hundreds (if not thousands) of years from now, assuming man builds a space ship carrying people to another galaxy, the passengers looking out a window into deep space still won't be able to see these rich colors w/ their naked eyes?

I guess for me, it's a question of realism. Granted just because my eyes can't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. For example, if I see a photo of a beautiful sunset captured in Hawaii, I can imagine such a sunset to be relatively *real*.

I am curious whether if I was in outer space, would I be able to see what some of you are able to produce/capture.

Like this? (sketch of a movie last scene we've all seen, from the net)

jwcdds wrote in post #11087239
So in short, hundreds (if not thousands) of years from now, assuming man builds a space ship carrying people to another galaxy, the passengers looking out a window into deep space still won't be able to see these rich colors w/ their naked eyes?

I guess for me, it's a question of realism. Granted just because my eyes can't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. For example, if I see a photo of a beautiful sunset captured in Hawaii, I can imagine such a sunset to be relatively *real*.

I am curious whether if I was in outer space, would I be able to see what some of you are able to produce/capture.

I think if you could get closer, so that the object filled as much of your field of view, as it does the camera's fov, you would see approximately what these images show. Assuming the camera is set up for standard visible light photography, that is. Some people modify their dslrs to enable them to image objects in wavelengths the human eye can't pick up.