Pleiades - Seven Sisters

[Langy]

Got my xBox webcam delivered today so as soon as I see some clear skies went straight outside to have a play.

Not used Registax yet so have to have a play around and see if the short videos I captured are any good, will post that later on.

So when I had finished with the webcam I stuck in the 20mm EP and took my usual viewing of Jupiter. The Startgaze calendar for earlier this week listed Pleiades which I hadn't looked for yet. With checking where it should be in Stellarium earlier in the day I realized that I've seen it plenty of times with the naked eye and with it almost disappearing over the house decided to take a look with the telescope.

Now I have to say I was quite amazed with what I see. I couldn't see any sign of the gas (not sure I would be able to with my scope) but with the weather tonight the stars there were all so bright. Now my 20mm gives me about 1 degree FOV and it would have actually been quite nice to have something a little wider to take it all in properly.

As a newbie to astronomy we don't know what we should all be looking for, just the last few days the hot topic has been the supernova for which isn't the easiest thing to find for someone new. Orion Nebula and Andromeda often get mentioned quite a bit too. For anyone new take a look at Pleiades (Seven Sisters). Forget high powered equipment, it can easily be seen with the naked eye and that's saying something with my eyesight. For the best results binoculars or the lower powered EP on your telescope. My 20mm is 32.5 magnification and is probably a little too much to take it all in.

So checking the skies for where the cloud was and coming from I decided to rush indoors and grab the camera and tripod. So using my 6+ year old EOS 300D and the zoom lens set at 300 mm I moved to the upper level of my postage stamp garden to gain a few feet higher view over the top of the house. All lined up and focused with the settings at 1.3 seconds and f5.6 I used the remote release and proceeded to take as many RAW images as I could before the cloud came in not knowing how much would be captured, just checking the camera was still aligned every 15 images or so. By the time the cloud was in for good I had notched up 95 images, so lens cap on and proceeded with the usual 20 darks and bias frames. Everything packed up and files downloaded to the computer I use for processing these and about 30 minutes later had the image below. The image was a result of 60 out of the 95 being stacked with DSS then finally tweaked in PS CS6.

To summarize my hour outside I have to say that the whole enjoyment came from a low powered EP and using an old DSLR. It just goes to show that you don't need equipment that cost 4 figures to enjoy what looks fairly faint to the eye and still be amazed by it. Oh and of course Jupiter through the 20mm still amazes me every time I take a look. If it was there 365 days a year it would still be the object I'd have to take a look at every time I went out.